Researchers from the University of Glasgow have been awarded over £1 million for collections research. Collections: an Enlightenment Pedagogy for the 21st Century, financed by a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholarships grant, will fund 15 PhD researchers over three years, from diverse subject areas, for museum and archival collections. The grant is one of only 14 awards given by the Leverhulme Trust in a nationwide competition.

Collections responds to a crisis in contemporary scholarship where subject specialisation has led to an increasingly narrow focus for researchers in Science, Arts and Humanities, creating an impoverished response from the academy to the complexity and scale of collections and object data. Collections will address this dilemma through multi- and trans-disciplinary investigative approaches, combining diverse empirical methods with consideration of live ethical issues. Researchers will operate between material collections in museums and galleries, statistical data, paper archives and medical data-banks and will secure the University and the City of Glasgow as a world-leading centre for research and creative engagement with collections. Through shared training initiatives, collaborative research and public engagement activities, the Collections students will work together to articulate an innovative pedagogic model that should serve as a paradigm for post-graduate collections research and engagement elsewhere.

The intellectual and operational hub for the project will be provided by the Collections Study Centre at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow (pictured right) being developed by The Hunterian, the University of Glasgow’s museums and galleries service. Supported by a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant of £4.85m, the Kelvin Hall development will bring together - under one roof - The Hunterian’s internationally important study collections of 1.3m objects and specimens. The Study Centre will enhance delivery of UoG’s post-graduate curatorial training programmes and host the Leverhulme students. The Centre, which will open in September 2016, will also attract visiting research staff and exchange students from around the UK and overseas.

Professor Karen Lury, Dean of Research of the University’s College of Arts, said:

“The need for a holistic vision for the academy is all the more pressing now, as researchers confront an environment where advances in digitisation and an accelerating global connectivity have further increased the complexity and sheer number of accessible collections, whether these are artefacts, data or other kinds of ‘collected’ material.

“It is becoming easier for disciplines to lose touch with each other when pushed into increasingly narrow specialisms, when there is much they might share and be able to benefit from.”

Hunterian Director, Professor David Gaimster, added

“The Award creates the first dedicated community of doctoral researchers for university collections in the UK, if not in the world. We anticipate the individual projects forging new methodologies and practice in collections research and fully exploiting the opportunities for cross-disciplinary investigation and collaboration”.

First published: 14 January 2015

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