Garance Nyssen is a PhD student at the Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the University of East Anglia in Norwich (UK). Rooted in an ethnographic methodology, her research focuses on the return of ancient Polynesian objects to Tahiti (French Polynesia) - at the Te Fare Iamanaha-Musée de Tahiti et des Îles (2023) - after their displacement in museums in mainland France and England for two centuries. Garance and her collaborators in French Polynesia, Paris and London, try to understand the materiality of the objects, the cosmological contexts which framed their existence and use two centuries ago, the reasons why they left their islands at the beginning of the 19th century, and also what future lies ahead for them. Garance specifically looks at two of the returned objects: a presumed fragment of maro 'ura and a maro kura, both former chiefly sacred girdles. In French Polynesia, she works in Tahiti, Ra'iātea and Ganā, three islands related to these objects. The latter guide her to cultural leaders, elders, weavers, artists, curators, and many other knowledge holders and cultural practioners. 

Her research is funded by CHASE, AHRC.

Garance has gained valuable experience through her internships at several cultural institutions such as the Te Fare Iamanaha-Musée de Tahiti et des îles (French Polynesia), the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta (Vanuatu) and the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in La Rochelle (France), as well as through her several fieldworks at the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac (2020-2021, four months) and in French Polynesia (2022-2024, thirteen months).

She is co-founder of Oceania focused blog and association CASOAR.