Newcastle University

Faculty Member, International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies

Professor (designate) of Museology

About

I work at the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University. I have been here for a decade first as Lecturer in Museum, Gallery and Heritage Studies (2002-7), then as Senior Lecturer (2007-12) and then as Professor of Museology (from 2012). I trained and worked as an art historian and art curator, but my research activities today are much broader. I publish in the field of museum history and theory, with particular emphases on architecture, display, knowledge construction and interpretation. In the context of museological study I have strong interests in learning theory, social constructionism, theories of representation, cultural cartography, time and place, co-production, art theory, disciplinarity and epistemology. My latest monograph is a book on interpreting art in museums and galleries (Routledge 2012: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415419222/).

I am currently managing the Newcastle University work package of the EU FP7 'MELA' project: European Museums and Libraries in/of the Age of Migrations - a 2.7 million euro award working with 8 other institutions across Europe, led by the Politecnico di Milano (http://www.mela-project.eu/). In this context I am busy researching how museum representations articulate the relationships between places, cultures and identities in Europe. Over the next few years I will be co-authoring a number of books to disseminate this research.

I have developing interests in: representations and constructions of time in museums; museums and migration; European identities; and Turkish museum cultures. Having lived, studied and worked for many years in Italy I also have a persistent interest in Italian museums and cultural heritage.

I run the Newcastle University interdisciplinary research group on the Cultural Significance of Place (http://csopnu.wordpress.com/) and I am, or have been, an investigator on various RCUK and other grants. These include 'Contemporary Visual Art and Identity Construction - wellbeing amongst older people', funded by the cross-council 'New Dynamics of Aging' scheme and ''Art on Tyneside': redeveloping a permanent display about art, place and identity', which led to the development of the new 'Northern Spirit' permanent display at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/laing/news/northern-spirit/). My grant award work is undertaken with research teams and colleagues from ICCHS at Newcastle University in collaboration with museums, galleries and other agencies. It often involves working with communities of visitors and non-visitors and qualitative analyses of people's cultural experiences.

I am  interested in supervising doctoral students wishing to work on:
- museum and gallery history
- meaning making, interpretation and education in art museums
- museum epistemology
- cultural cartography
- representations and experiences of time and place
- museums and the EU
- museums and cultural heritage in Italy
- museums and cultural heritage in Turkey

I am Director of Research for the School of Arts and Cultures at Newcastle University, with responsibility for research management and performance over multiple subject areas including Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Journalism, Music, Musicology, Fine Art, Art History, Digital Media and Museum, Gallery and Heritage Studies. I am a Peer Review College Member for the UK Government's Arts and Humanities Research Council and of the Qatar National Research Fund. I have held external examiner appointments at the universities of Sheffield and Glasgow. I often give papers, keynotes and run workshops on the conference circuit, in museums and in other universities. 

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