Research

This page is a work in progress (as we assemble all the relevant projects from our archives!).

Many of our projects involve a research element, and we enjoy working with academic partners, particularly when they tell us we’re on to something.

We’re too small to apply for many types of funding that are available only to large research organisations (like Independent Research Organisations (IROs) or Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), so always on the lookout for academic partners who could be our Principal Investigators. We’ve manoeuvred to be a supplier or partner or even co-investigator on academic projects, so are familiar with the terrain.

Collaborations & Commissions with University Partners

Amagugu Ethu (Our Treasures)

“Decolonization remains a major challenge for museums worldwide. This workshop examines linkages within South African experiences of displacement and the possibilities for constructive engagements with trauma, decolonization, and re-classification by reconnecting with museum collections.”

  • Dr Laura Gibson, King’s College London
  • Dr Hannah Turner, University of Leicester (now at UBC)

Engaging in Antiquity in the Goulburn Valley

“Since 2016, we have been working with a group of schools in the Goulburn Valley to provide an object-based learning (OBL) opportunity with the intention  that the experience will assist in improving learning and retention, raising aspiration levels, tertiary education opportunities and career pathways, and promoting cross-cultural awareness.”

  • Dr Sharyn Volk at University of Melbourne
  • Dr Annelies Van de Ven at Université catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve

AHRC Creative Economy Engagement Fellowships

We collaborated on two projects:

Feast & Fast
Sending these low-cost collections to audiences with minimal access to wider cultural provision, we could drastically increase the reach of the museum’s collections as well as attract new and more diverse audiences to the museum itself.

  • Dr Abi Glen at Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Exploring the Mediterranean & Its Stories
Making museum data and collections research both available and palatable to researchers and members of the public is a key challenge that all cultural heritage institutions are increasingly facing. The use of innovative digital tools, especially 3D technology, as part of the Creative Economy Engagement Fellowships gives us an excellent opportunity to look at new and exciting ways to not only tell unknown stories from the collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum but also to feature on-going research and other digital content in a new light.

  • Dr Jennifer Wexler at Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Using Make Your Own as a Tool in Higher Education

There’s naturally also collection & object-oriented research involved when you Make Your Own, but we wanted to showcase some of our collaborations that are studying the form as well as its function, and using a Box to interrogate formal research questions.

Are you at a higher ed institution? Want to make some mischief original research with us?