PhD Studentship: Navigating Networks and Developing Practice: People and Biography in the British Museum Collection Database

Supervisors:  

Professor Rachel Mairs (Reading) and Dr Victoria Donnellan (British Museum)

Project Overview:

Museums and museum documentation are oriented around objects. But museums also need to document, research and tell stories about the people who made, found, owned or exchanged objects. This project explores the history, challenges and potential of documenting people in museum databases.

Shared challenges include the variable quality and coverage of legacy data about people, and the limitations of current data structures, shaped by years of cataloguing practice, both paper-based and digital. Museum databases are not neutral: their structures, emphases and silences perpetuate inequalities and ways of thinking that may be discriminatory, colonial and exclusionary. There is enormous potential to enrich data, address legacy terminology, increase representation, and mobilize person records as powerful connectors between people, objects, places, events and documentary evidence.

The British Museum (BM) Person Authority is the key research resource for this project, containing over 200,000 records for people connected with the museum’s objects. The student will research and critique the BM’s historic and contemporary practice, relating to cataloguing people. They will develop new best practice, while enriching knowledge of the networks of people connected with the museum’s archaeological collections. This BM case study will make important contributions to wider practice. The student will relate it to current research and evolving practice in the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) sector and wider digital landscape and will develop and disseminate recommendations for cataloguing people.

The project will provide the researcher with a strong foundation for a career in museums and/or archaeological research, combining subject-related research with extensive practical experience in digital cataloguing.

The project is jointly supervised by the University of Reading and the British Museum and funded under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships programme.

Eligibility: 

• Students should have a master’s degree in a relevant subject or be able to demonstrate equivalent experience in a professional setting.
• The studentship is open to both UK and international applicants.

Funding Details:   

• Starts October 2024
• 4-year award, to include 3 months of relevant work experience
• Funding covers full tuition fees plus an enhanced stipend of £20,837 (2024/25).

How to apply:  

Before applying, please read the full project outline for this opportunity which provides further background information, details of research questions and how to submit your application.

Application Deadline: 10 June 2024

Further Enquiries:  

Please note that, where a candidate is successful in being awarded funding, this will be confirmed via a formal studentship award letter; this will be provided separately from any Offer of Admission and will be subject to standard checks for eligibility and other criteria.

For further details please contact Professor Rachel Mairs r.mairs@reading.ac.uk

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