Bücher der Reihe Routledge Research in Museum Studies

Revisiting the Past in Museums and at Historic Sites demonstrates that museums and historic spaces are increasingly becoming "backdrops" for all sorts of appropriations and interventions that throw new light upon the objects they comprise and the pasts they reference.

Theorizing Equity in the Museum integrates the perspectives of learning researchers and museum practitioners to shed light on the deep-seated structures that must be accounted for if the field is to move past aspirations and rhetoric and towards more inclusive practices.

Curating Lively Objects explores the role of things as catalysts in imagining futures beyond disciplines for museums and exhibitions. Authors describe how their curatorial collaborations with diverse objects, from rocks to robots, generate new ways of organising and sharing knowledge.

Connecting Museums focuses on museums and their relationship with heath, inclusion, and community, as well as a detailed assessment of the alliances that have been established between museums and other stakeholders in recent years.

This book examines the interactions and cultural clashes between Maori and non-Maori museum professionals in their day-to-day work at New Zealand's National Museum.

This innovative collection of essays offers a comparative history of independent and institutional collections of psychiatric objects in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom. Leading scholars in the field investigate collectors, collections, their display, and the reactions to exhibitions of the history of insanity.

Current discourse on Indigenous engagement in museum studies is often dominated by curatorial and academic perspectives, in which community voice, viewpoints, and reflections on their collaborations can be under-represented. This book provides a unique look at Indigenous perspectives on museum community engagement and the process of self-representation, specifically how the First Nations Elders of the Blackfoot Confederacy have worked with museums and heritage sites in Alberta, Canada, to represent their own culture and history. Situated in a post-colonial context, the case-study sites are places of contention, a politicized environment that highlights commonly hidden issues and naturalized inequalities built into current approaches to community engagement. Data from participant observation, archives, and in-depth interviewing with participants brings Blackfoot community voice into the text and provides an alternative understanding of self and cross-cultural representation. Focusing on the experiences of museum professionals and Blackfoot Elders who have worked with a number of museums and heritage sites, Indigenous Voices in Cultural Institutions unpicks the power and politics of engagement on a micro level and how it can be applied more broadly, by exposing the limits and challenges of cross-cultural engagement and community self-representation. The result is a volume that provides readers with an in-depth understanding of the nuances of self-representation and decolonization.

This volume examines peace museums, a small and important (but often overlooked) series of museums whose numbers have multiplied internationally since the 1970s. It introduces the history and significance of peace museums and their different approaches through a selected series of peace museum sites. It attempts to categorize and distinguish between different types of museums that are linked to peace in name, theme or purpose and to urge a "critical peace museums studies" in examining their varied emphasis and content.

Visitor engagement and learning, outreach, and inclusion are concepts that have long dominated professional museum discourses.  The recent rapid uptake of various forms of social media in many parts of the world, however, calls for a reformulation of familiar opportunities and obstacles in museum debates and practices. Young people, as both early adopters of digital forms of communication and latecomers to museums, increasingly figure as a key target group for many museums.  This volume presents and discusses the most advanced research on the multiple ways in which social media operates to transform museum communications in countries as diverse as Australia, Denmark, Germany, Norway, the UK, and the United States.  It examines the socio-cultural contexts, organizational and education consequences, and methodological implications of these transformations. 

This volume examines peace museums, a small and important (but often overlooked) series of museums whose numbers have multiplied internationally since the 1970s. It introduces the history and significance of peace museums and their different approaches through a selected series of peace museum sites. It attempts to categorize and distinguish between different types of museums that are linked to peace in name, theme or purpose and to urge a "critical peace museums studies" in examining their varied emphasis and content.

Current discourse on Indigenous engagement in museum studies is often dominated by curatorial and academic perspectives, in which community voice, viewpoints, and reflections on their collaborations can be under-represented. This book provides a unique look at Indigenous perspectives on museum community engagement and the process of self-representation, specifically how the First Nations Elders of the Blackfoot Confederacy have worked with museums and heritage sites in Alberta, Canada, to represent their own culture and history. Situated in a post-colonial context, the case-study sites are places of contention, a politicized environment that highlights commonly hidden issues and naturalized inequalities built into current approaches to community engagement. Data from participant observation, archives, and in-depth interviewing with participants brings Blackfoot community voice into the text and provides an alternative understanding of self and cross-cultural representation.

Visitor engagement and learning, outreach, and inclusion are concepts that have long dominated professional museum discourses. The recent rapid uptake of various forms of social media in many parts of the world, however, calls for a reformulation of familiar opportunities and obstacles in museum debates and practices. Young people, as both early adopters of digital forms of communication and latecomers to museums, increasingly figure as a key target group for many museums. This volume presents and discusses the most advanced research on the multiple ways in which social media operates to transform museum communications in countries as diverse as Australia, Denmark, Germany, Norway, the UK, and the United States. It examines the socio-cultural contexts, organizational and education consequences, and methodological implications of these transformations.

The edited volume offers detailed analysis of how innovative curatorial relationships between museums and academia have sought to engage new, younger, audiences through the collaborative transformation of museums and exhibitions. Thematic topics explored include the forming and nature of interdisciplinary partnerships, the integration of museum learning into higher education, audience engagement, and digital technology. With a particular emphasis on practice in the US, the range of projects discussed includes those at both widely recognized and lesser known institutions, from The Met to the Tohono O¿odham Nation Cultural Center in the US, to Ewha University Museum in South Korea, and Palazzo Strozzi in Italy. The role of art and the work of the artist are firmly positioned at the core of many of the relationships explored.

Snapshots of Museum Experience uses a method of photo-elicitation with child visitors to the museum in order to investigate children¿s experience, rather than the usual focus on museum learning. By so doing, the book undermines many of our assumptions about the interests, needs and demands of child museum visitors.

Climate change is a complex and dynamic environmental, cultural and political phenomenon that is reshaping our relationship to nature. Climate change is a global force, with global impacts. Viable solutions on what to do must involve dialogues and decision-making with many agencies, stakeholder groups and communities crossing all sectors and scales. Current policy approaches are inadequate and finding a consensus on how to reduce levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through international protocols has proven difficult. Gaps between science and society limit government and industry capacity to engage with communities to broker innovative solutions to climate change. Drawing on leading-edge research and creative programming initiatives, this collection details the important roles and agencies that cultural institutions (in particular, natural history and science museums and science centres) can play within these gaps as resources, catalysts and change agents in climate change debates and decision-making processes; as unique public and trans-national spaces where diverse stakeholders, government and communities can meet; where knowledge can be mediated, competing discourses and agendas tabled and debated; and where both individual and collective action might be activated.

"Simultaneously published in the UK"--Title page verso.

This book reflects on the complexity and difficulty of museums' experiences in presenting and interpreting the histories of slavery and abolition. It draws together contributions from academics, museum professionals, community activists and artists who were involved in marking the bicentenary of Britain¿s abolition of the slave trade.

This innovative collection of essays offers a comparative history of independent and institutional collections of psychiatric objects in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom. Leading scholars in the field investigate collectors, collections, their display, and the reactions to exhibitions of the history of insanity.

"Simultaneously published in the UK"--T.p. verso.

"Simultaneously published in the UK"--Title page verso.

"Simultaneously published in the UK"--T.p. verso.

Climate change is a complex and dynamic environmental, cultural and political phenomenon that is reshaping our relationship to nature, but gaps between science and society limit government and industry capacity to engage with communities to broker innovative solutions to climate change. Drawing on leading-edge research and creative programming initiatives, this collection details the important roles and agencies that cultural institutions (in particular, natural history and science museums and science centres) can play within these gaps as resources, catalysts and change agents in climate change debates and decision-making processes; as unique public and trans-national spaces where diverse stakeholders, government and communities can meet; where knowledge can be mediated, competing discourses and agendas tabled and debated; and where both individual and collective action might be activated.