Centre For Heritage And Museum Studies Anu

The Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies is based in the Research School of Humanities and the Arts at the Australian National University

The Centre aims to promote and develop critical heritage and museum studies as an interdisciplinary area of academic analysis, and explore its intersections with memory studies and public history, as well as anthropology, archaeology and tourism studies. We want to stimulate new ways of thinking about and understanding the cultural and political phenomenon of ‘heritage’, and the way this interacts with cultural and public policy, management practices, cultural institutions and community and other grassroots expressions of identity, citizenship, nation and sense of place.

A particular focus of research and teaching in the Centre is the interlinking of a range of social justice issues with expressions of material heritage and /or intangible heritage, and staff at the Centre are at the forefront of the Critical Heritage Studies movement.

Our work has explored, amongst other issues, working with marginalised communities, social justice issues and social activism in museums, the commemorative and memorial practices of working class communities and the trade union movement, Aboriginal critiques of heritage, multiculturalism and museums. While Centre staff are keen to pursue research that goes beyond issues of management and curation, we nonetheless aim to integrate research into practice and policy with a critical examination of the social, cultural and political ‘work’ that heritage does in society.

We aim to attract postgraduate research and coursework students who are interested in pushing the boundaries of what critical heritage, museum studies, memory studies and public history and studies of tourism can do, and creating a vibrant international and interdisciplinary community of scholars to pursue this vision. Centre staff edit the following journals: the International Journal of Heritage Studies [link] , the foremost journal in the field; Museum Worlds, an innovative new journal committed to significantly advancing knowledge of global trends, case studies and theory relevant to museum practice and scholarship around the world; and Landscape Research, one of the leading journals in the field of landscape-related research.

Staff in the centre contribute to postgraduate and undergraduate teaching, and while providing students with a background in practical and policy issues, also aim to provide critical insights, drawn from staff research, into the social and political consequences of heritage practice. In addition, the Centre’s vigorous intern program, drawing on extensive and long term industry connections and partnerships allow students to develop professional expertise and experience. These opportunities are facilitated by the depth of our relationship with national cultural institutions based in the Australian capital, such as the National Museum of Australia.