We are certainly not the first to consider how emotions are experienced in the museum. However, attention to emotion in museums has overwhelmingly focused on the experiences of visitors and the emotions they feel when they engage with museums. When emotions have been discussed in museum work, this has typically focused on specific areas of museum work such as community engagement and public outreach. However, there is growing academic and sector concern to not only more closely examine emotions in museum work, but to focus on other parts of the museum. For example, what would the emotion of museum or collections management look like, and how might this differ from the emotional labour of a front of house assistant? 

When we consider how emotions in the workplace have been researched, the well-known work of Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild (1983) comes to mind. She first attended to workers’ “emotional labour”, or the ways that emotions are used and managed in the workplace in her influential study of airline cabin crew. Yet attention to how emotions are used and experienced specifically in the museum (and more widely heritage) sector remains scarce. This is despite an emerging theme focusing on museum worker’s emotional safety which can be seen through discussions of ‘vicarious’ trauma potentially experienced by those working with sensitive collections (Laurent & Hart, 2018, Collins et al, 2020). Moreover, current contexts of urgent change presented by anti-racist and decolonial agendas, climate justice, and socially engaged practice are changing relationships between museums, their publics, and collections. This requires new skills and ways of working that use workers’ emotional labour, and conceivably in more complex ways.  

With growing practitioner interest in the emotional dimensions of museum work, indicated through a recent Museums Association workforce wellbeing survey, there is a desire to better acknowledge, value, and support this aspect of professional practice.

Our RSE supported research (and ongoing collaboration) considers the following critical questions:  

Ultimately, through our RSE project and beyond we hope to build new networks and conversations between interdisciplinary researchers, museum practitioners, and policy makers to establish a platform for further research and partnership to positively support the use and experience of emotions in museum work.

Keep checking back for the latest news or contact us if you would like to know more!  

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