Museums and heritage research

Museums, heritage and public history is a rapidly expanding area at Birkbeck and we engage with the most pressing issues of the day, including museum closures, legacies of colonialism, migration, contested histories and diversity.

Our academics and researchers adopt a collaborative spirit, working together through centres and networks to share areas of expertise that cultivates innovative, interdisciplinary research.

The ongoing work of the Mapping Museums Lab, a collaboration with Birkbeck's School of Computer Science, researches the emergence, distribution and closure of museums, and their afterlives. Birkbeck also co-hosts the Raphael Samuel History Centre with Queen Mary, University of London, exploring London history and history from below, and is dedicated to taking history into the wider community.

Located in the heart of Bloomsbury, within walking distance of a wide range of national museums and galleries, collections and archives, we provide a hub for intellectual exchange and debate relating to all aspects of museology, curation and heritage.

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CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS

Mapping Museums Project

During the late twentieth century, the number of UK museums more than tripled. This Birkbeck-led project documents and analyses how the sector changed between 1960 and 2020. Find out more and see the data.

Shakespeare in the Royal Collections

We are examining the place of Shakespeare in the Royal Collections by investigating the holdings and the stories they tell.

RESEARCH CENTRES AND NETWORKS

Centre for Museum Cultures

A hub for intellectual exchange and debate relating to all aspects of museology, curation, and heritage.

History and Theory of Photography Research Centre

We aim to facilitate, exchange and showcase existing and new interdisciplinary research in the wider photographic and academic community.

Architecture, Space and Society Centre

We provide a focus for research activities taking place within Birkbeck and beyond in the area of architectural, design, and landscape history.

Birkbeck Institute of Humanities

We engage with important public issues to foster and promote a climate of interdisciplinary research and collaboration among academics and researchers.

Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies

A group focused on innovative research projects exploring the long nineteenth century (ca. 1790-1914).

Contemporary Poetics Research Centre

A forum for the study and performance of contemporary poetries, and research into their historical, political and theoretical contexts.

Eighteenth-century research group

We bring together researchers who use a wide variety of media to explore Europe in the eighteenth century.

Guilt Working Group

The relation between modern guilts and other forms and discourses of guilt is rich and strange. We aim to provide a focus for discussions around this concept.

Vasari Research Centre

We integrate digital research with educational and cultural projects using innovative approaches to technology.

Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality

We offer a forum for innovative interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange in gender and sexuality studies.

Centre for Medical Humanities

We draw together research in the field of medical humanities which take place across Birkbeck.

Areas of research expertise

All staff are active researchers in the subject. View their areas of research here

Staff research

PAST RESEARCH PROJECTS

Our staff have been involved in many unique research projects, among them the following:

Aesthetics In Extremis: The Rise of Victorian Violence

How did the global geopolitical climate of the late nineteenth century affect its visual aesthetics and perception of violence?

Identifying with the Art of the Fifteenth Century

This project, supported by the British Academy, explores the art of fifteenth-century Europe and the interests which have shaped its study.

Madness and Modernity

This project looked at mental illness, the visual arts and architecture in fin de siecle Vienna.

Micromuseology

This project investigated whether museums might change if academics focused on small independent single-subject ones.

Ottoman Pasts, Present Cities

This research project looks to see what the past of the Ottoman Empire can teach us in the present about memorial connections between different groups.

SHOCK CITY: IMAGE AND ARCHITECTURE IN INDUSTRIAL MANCHESTER

Discover the study of the urban imaginary of ascendant industrial middle classes.

The Corporeal Territories of War

This Wellcome Trust funded project investigated the cultural significance of facial injury in First World War Britain.

The Fallen Woman

The Foundling Museum commissioned Birkbeck art historian Professor Lynda Nead to curate the exhibition because of her research on the visual representation of women in Victorian Britain.