For three months, from March to June 2024, I completed a placement with the Practitioner Research Associate (PRA) team at the Fitzwilliam Museum, the largest of the University of Cambridge Museums. The PRAs are a new addition to the Museum and are an innovation in the sector as they combine participatory research and practice in a university museum setting. They are conducting a range of participatory research projects at the Museum, working with different members of the community to make it a more welcoming, inclusive place.
While I had worked in museums before, in visitor service and historical research roles, I was completely new to this kind of research. It was extremely useful to expand my skillset beyond the methods typically used in the history discipline. As part of the placement, I was able to assist the PRAs in their sessions with participants, in running public events, and gathering and analysing data. On a typical day I might be helping with a session with community members, tracking visitors in the gallery space, analysing survey data and written responses, fixing up an AI-generated transcript, and attending an event planning meeting.
I also had my own project – to write a detailed report about the work they’ve done so far, why these positions exist, where they might go in the future, and provide recommendations. As part of writing the report I interviewed nine members of staff about how they saw the work. While I’m used to writing from my perspective in my academic life, this time I was writing for an institutional audience in a more collaborative way, with plenty of input from the team. I learned a whole new range of professional skills that will be hugely beneficial going forward.
The team were very welcoming and supportive throughout the placement. As a PhD researcher, you have to be very independent and self-motivated. Working with such a close-knit and collaborative team was a very enriching experience that gave me a whole range of new skills. As I approach the end of the PhD, I’ve also been thinking about the future. This experience really helped me understand the differences between the relatively solitary nature of traditional academic research and the more collaborative nature of other workplace roles. These PRA teams are also helping to break down these barriers, as they cover both museum practice and academic research.
I wrote three blog posts while I was there, one of which has already been published:
‘Welcoming Families at the Fitzwilliam Museum’ University of Cambridge Museums https://www.museums.cam.ac.uk/blog/2024/05/28/welcoming-families-at-the-fitzwilliam-museum/
I am incredibly grateful to the OOC DTP for supporting my placement, and to the team at the Fitzwilliam for making it such an educational and enjoyable experience.
