Check out the Student Engager blog to read about our research, questions from visitors, and how we use the museums to make our research accessible.

We are a group of postgraduate research students developing innovative and experimental engagement strategies in UCL museums and collections. We aim to broaden public awareness of current research by sharing our knowledge with museum audiences, making connections between our own areas of expertise and UCL collections. We study a myriad of topics—everything from bones and brains to medieval manuscripts and the Dark Web. Whilst some of our academic interests may not seem to have obvious links to the museum collections, we have all found objects and themes in the museums which are relevant to our research.

Coming from a diverse range of disciplines, our individual areas of interest are wide-ranging, and our day-to-day activities cover a variety of methods from archival research, object-based work and historiography, to ethnography, scientific fieldwork and data analysis. As a group, we share a common desire to bring our research to new audiences, and to make what we do accessible to the wider public. Through our conversations with museum visitors, we hope not only to engage others in our research and encourage visitors to think about the collections in novel and varied ways, but also to broaden our own research expertise by responding reflexively to public feedback. Open-ended discussions with visitors may stimulate ideas for new lines of research inquiry, and the questions we encounter will often spark off interesting ideas and challenge us to explore unexpected links. We hope to learn from you, just as you learn from us!