We will be giving an online talk (1-2pm UK time) on Tuesday 26 March at the University of Stirling’s Centre for Environment, Heritage and Policy seminar series (details and a link for joining will be available here). This seminar series aims “to share and ‘test out’ new ideas, seek wider collaboration, disseminate research, strengthen and expand upon the established links between the Divisions, and — most importantly — reinforce a strong and vibrant research culture” (https://www.stir.ac.uk/events/23-24/cehp-seminar-series/). The seminars are informal and have no single format.

Do join us (title and abstract below)!

Taking care of the workers: understanding museum and heritage professionals’ emotionally laden work.

Museums and heritage sites are being encouraged to form deeper more democratic relationships with their diverse publics requiring new skills and ways of working which utilise workers’ emotional labour. However, little applied or scholarly attention has been paid to the role that this labour plays in creating resilient organisations. Questions can be raised around whether such labour is potentially exploitative, unbalanced, and undervalued and if there are sufficient organisational ‘structures of care’ to support those called upon to utilise emotions in their work. This presentation will introduce a new collaboration which seeks to explore emotionally laden museum work in wider contexts of radical change and uncertainty (e.g., from funding cuts, COVID-19, decolonisation, climate crisis). Offering reflections on how and why museum and heritage professionals appear to be increasingly required to utilise their emotional labour in their daily activities, it will establish a wider research context, aims and objectives for this collaboration, while warmly inviting conversation to further steer initial steps into this domain.\

Jennie and Anna