The Hunterian

The Hunterian and HATII at the University of Glasgow are part of a consortium which has secured highly sought-after funding through Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks Action. 

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions, named after the double Nobel Prize winning Polish-French scientist famed for her work on radioactivity, provide grants for all stages of researchers' careers - be they doctoral candidates or highly experienced researchers - and encourage transnational, intersectoral and interdisciplinary mobility. They enable research-focused organisations (universities, research centres, and companies) to host talented foreign researchers and to create strategic partnerships with leading institutions worldwide.

The successful application titled POEM (PARTICIPATORY MEMORY PRACTICES. Concepts, strategies and media infrastructures for envisioning socially inclusive potential futures of European Societies through culture), is co-ordinated by the University of Hamburg and a consortium of members including the University of Glasgow, University of Uppsala, Aarhus University, the Technological University of Cyprus and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin. The consortium also features a number of partners including cultural heritage and creative industry organisations where the PhD students will undertake placements.

The University will lead on 'Work Package 1: Connectivities built by Professionals' which will examine how the paradigm of Participatory Memory Work (which is the focus of the overall POEM project) affects heritage and public memory, building processes in institutional memory work and their embeddedness in larger political and administrative structures. The funding will support two PhD student projects co-ordinated by Dr Maria Economou, Hunterian Joint Curator/Lecturer in Museum Studies. 

The contribution by the University through The Hunterian and HATII will produce insights into connectivities built through social media use by museums and gamification approaches. Using an action research approach, it will bring together scientific research and museum work. 

The first project 'Crowdsourcing of Digital Cultural Heritage Collections through Gamification' will use the Kelvin Hall Open Collections online catalogue as a case study. It will investigate the potential of gamification and other motivational approaches to encourage diverse audiences to engage with digital cultural heritage collections and volunteer information about personal and shared memories and values in a crowdsourcing model. It will also investigate how this information is integrated in the cultural institutions’ knowledge bases. As well as working with The Hunterian and the other Kelvin Hall partners, the project also includes a secondment at the Museum of European Cultures in Berlin.

The second project 'Social Media for Encouraging Engagement with Arts and Culture in Museums” will include a secondment at Glasgow Museums and at Wikimedia Germany. It will analyse social media data from The Hunterian and Glasgow Museums and will examine the relationship between the online and the on-site experience. This will shed light on the online social interactions and the impact and quality of these on the cultural experiences of users and stakeholders, as well as the impact on the cultural organisations.

Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020).

 

 

 

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First published: 3 May 2017