I joined the University of Glasgow in 2018 as a Learning and Teaching specialist. I primarily contribute to postgraduate teaching and professional training within the College of Arts. I am also involved in public engagement with the university's collections, working alongside cultural partners at Kelvin Hall, including The Hunterian. 

In 2022 I was awarded a College Teaching Excellence Award as part of the Museum Studies Teaching Team. 

I have held research and teaching positions at Newcastle University, the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University.

My PhD, completed in 2014, examined the role of heritage in young people's conceptualisations of national identity and belonging in Scotland.

I have worked in Visitor Studies and Learning and Engagement in museums and community heritage organisations in Scotland and Canada, and undertaken research and teaching in collaboration with Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums, North East England. I have also collaborated with the National Library of Scotland as supervisor on collaborative doctoral partnership funded under the Scottish Cultural Heritage Consortium. 

I am an active participant of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies, having attended conferences in Gothenburg (2012), Canberra (2014) and Montreal (2016) and organised events for the ACHS UK Chapter. 

My research and teaching interests focus on: 

• Critical Heritage Studies & Museology
• Cultural Politics
• Nationalism and National Identities
• Museums and Migration
• Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH)
• Museum Learning and Engagement
• Visitor Studies
• Community Heritage, Co-production, and Digital Participation

Linking these themes is an interest in how people utilise the past in the present and the role that cultural heritage plays in shaping people's sense of self and their relationships with others. I am particularly interested in issues surrounding identities, belonging, place, memory and empathy in museums.

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Franziska Mucha 

Co-creative events for engagement with digital cultural heritage collections

Abstract:

More and more cultural heritage institutions digitise their collections aiming to unlock potentials of accessibility, usefulness, and meaning to a new variety of users. However, there is a lack of robust knowledge about what exactly enables successful engagement with digital collections. This project aims to narrow this gap by investigating the relationships of three stakeholder groups participating in co-creative use of collections: museum practitioners, active users, and Open GLAM community members. It focuses on three main research questions:

• What are the challenges and benefits of co-creative events for these stakeholders?
• How do these stakeholders collaborate and what are the factors impacting their collaboration?
• What is the role of digital reuse and creative practice in engaging users with cultural heritage collections?

These questions are examined in three co-creative events: a hackathon about discomforting objects on display at The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, Scotland; a Coding da Vinci hackathon with openly licensed digital cultural collections in Dortmund, Germany; and a workshop for remixing museum objects with digital tools at the Museum Europäischer Kulturen, Berlin, Germany. The methodology focuses on participants’ collaborative and creative processes and combines ethnographic methods with practice research, using participant observation, creative workshops, interviews, and surveys.

The research provides multi-faceted insights into reusing digital collections and highlights the crucial role of social motivations, media practices, and institutional contexts for engagement. The findings suggest that, in order to unfold the social potential of collections, digitisation needs to be complemented with socio-affective spaces in which diverse participants can develop relationships, negotiate meanings, and explore uses of cultural heritage. The thesis thus outlines practice-oriented approaches for effectively supporting these processes.

I am Information Studies PGT Convenor and Programme Convenor for MSc Museum Studies. I teach, mark and moderate across all courses on the programme. 

2022-23 Teaching

Convenor:

• Introduction to Museology 
• Museum Learning and Engagement

Team Teaching:

• Museum Skills and Professional Practice
• Managing and Using Collections
• Exhibition Development
• Work Placement
• Dissertation and Applied Dissertation

I also contribute to postgraduate teaching in the Centre for Gender History. 

Selected Past Projects

MeLa*: European Museums in an age of migrations, Research Field 01, Newcastle University (with Prof Chris Whitehead (PI), Prof Rhiannon Mason, Dr Susannah Eckersley)

The MeLa Project was a four year multidisciplinary and collaborative Research Project involving nine European Partners, which was funded in 2011 within the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission.

Research Field 01 examined the historical and contemporary relationships between European museum representations and identity, using the focus of “people(s)” and “place” to investigate how fluidity, fragmentation, dislocation and mobility impact on individual and museum constructions of identity and belonging. The analysis of key displays in museums, interviews with museums’ staff and visitor studies highlighted the importance of place for the historical contextualisation of objects and events and, therefore, the explanation of past and present phenomena that may be socially divisive, such as racisms. Through the engagement with place, museums can develop more inclusive forms of representation, localise social differences and tensions, contribute to greater social awareness, and create progressive senses of belonging.

Co-Curate North East, Newcastle University

Co-Curate North East was an interdisciplinary project funded through the AHRC Connected Communities Digital Transformations research scheme. The project worked with schools and community groups across the North East of England to curate digital materials from museums, libraries, archives and community heritage organisations. 

Memberships and Professional Bodies

• Association of Critical Heritage Studies 
• Social History Curators Group
• Museum Association