Time has flown since we shared our end of project report in January, so we thought we would give a quick update on our activities.
Excitingly, the report has been gaining sector interest. The Museums Association featured it in one of their Museums Journal news articles (14 February 2025). Later this year we have an opinion piece coming out in this journal arguing for the importance of emotional labour (a concept famously associated with Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild). We were also thrilled to share our project findings with members of the Radical Rest Network on 5th February.
The project set up a range of questions that we think need attention. One of these is to identify what the ‘feeling rules’ of museum work are. To help us start considering this question, we are currently co-writing a Journal article exploring in more detail how Hochschild’s concept can be applied to museums. We hope that this will make an exciting contribution to scholarship in this area.
Watch this space!
Anna and Jennie