Books in the Routledge Research in Museum Studies series

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

The 1970s saw the emergence and subsequent proliferation across the Arabian Peninsula of `national museums¿, institutions aimed at creating social cohesion and affiliation to the state within a disparate population. Representing the Nation examines the wide-ranging use of exhibitionary forms of national identity projection via consideration of their motivations, implications (current and future), possible historical backgrounds, official and unofficial meanings, and meanings for both the user/visitor and the multiple creators. The book responds to, due to the importance placed on tradition, heritage and national identity across all the states of the Peninsula, and the growth of re-imagined and new museums, the need for far greater discussion and research in these areas.

Global Art and the Practice of the University-Museum provides new thinking on exhibitions of global art in relation to the institution defined by the partnership of the university and the museum. The book initiates a larger dialogue and inquiry into the value, contribution and model of the university-museum through exploring the way in which it has overseen the changes to a "global art." Through an approach that focuses on the "university-museum," the book traces how museum practices have expanded the understanding of the "art object."

This collection of essays focuses on the rarely studied hidden spaces in museums and explores issues such as the relationship between storage and canonization, the politics of collecting, the use of museum storage as a form of censorship, the architectural character of storage space, and the economic and epistemic value of museum objects.