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Staff Research Interests

Assoc Prof Jennifer Barrett

  • Research Areas:
  • Museums and the international public sphere
  • Museum history and politics
  • Cultural public spheres
  • Public space, art and culture
  • Current Projects:
  • Australian Artists and Museums (with Jacqueline Millner, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, Visual Arts Board (New Work Program 2005 and Presentation and Promotion Program 2009)
  • Museums, human rights, universalism and democracy: International Council of Museums, Federation of Human Rights Museums and the Universal Museums.
  • Hong Kong, cultural policy and ‘the new museum’
  • Research Networks:
  • 2010 International Society, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Dr Anna Lawrenson

Anna Lawrenson’s research is focused around a critique of curatorial practices in contemporary museums. Her research is concerned with the unique space that is cultivated by museums in which different modes of communication can be facilitated and by which more inclusive and participatory narratives presented.


CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS:

Democratisation of the Exhibition Development Process
This research focuses on how museums have revealed the rarefied processes of “behind the scenes” elements of exhibition development in order to provide the public with an opportunity to participate in those “backstage” processes. The museum is required to give over some of its authority and mystique in order to realise such projects but do the results warrant the risk?

Curating Experience
This project examines how museums have employed new media technology (in addition to other low tech tools) to transform the interpretation of objects within exhibitions. This transformation is often focussed on providing an immersive visitor experience that is participatory and animated, in stark contrast to what has previously been static and uninviting.

Dr Chiara O'Reilly

Her current research interests are in the Nineteenth century history of exhibitions, the museums of Australia and Europe, the Paris Salon and the role of the Museum in shaping ideas of identity.

Her areas of supervision include exhibition theory, development and history of museums, French and Australian Museums as well as ideas of landscape and preservation.