Prof Andrea Witcomb

Andrea's research interests range across the museum and heritage fields and are informed by theoretical, historical and professional practice concerns. She brings an interdisciplinary approach to her research, locating her work at the intersection of history, museology and cultural studies. Her interests include
1) Theorising museum practice using cultural studies approaches to the study of exhibitions and the policy discourses that surround them.
2) Embedding these within an awareness of institutional practices and ethos, that is speaking from practice up to theoretical debates rather than the other way round.
3) Focussing on relations between museums and communities.
4) Focussing on the concept of interactivity, using this to understand the impact of current media culture on exhibition design and interpretation practices.
Her contribution to theorizing museums has been to create a parallel space to the governmentality approach informed by the work of Michel Foucault. She has developed an argument for museums as dialogic spaces which use a variety of interpretation strategies and curatorial practices to engage in conversation across difference. She has opened up a space in which museums can be thought of as spaces of potentiality rather than either hegemonic closure or consumed by instrumentalist forms of governmentality.
She has done this along two main axis. The first is through studies of relations between museums and communities where she has looked at the representation of migration and cultural diversity  (Witcomb 1998, 2003, 2009 and with Hutchison, 2013 ) and at the ways in which local museums respond to governmentalist agendas  (Witcomb and Mauldon 1996, Witcomb 2003). The other has been to analyse the ways in which contemporary media culture has influenced interpretation strategies, either by creating spaces in which visitors can insert themselves into the exhibitions  (Witcomb 1994, 2003, 2007) or, more recently, by exploring the connection between the use of multimedia and spaces for cross-cultural communication that aim to bridge cultural difference rather than emphasising the separation between groups around identity. In this context Andrea is interested in exploring affective experiences in museums and heritage sites either through the use of multimedia  (Witcomb 2007, 2015), the art of installation  (Witcomb and Gregory 2007) and through objects  (2009, 2013, 2016).

Museums Australia
International Cultural Studies Association

Andrea's approach to teaching is always to bring a discussion of practice in conversation with a knowledge of the theory about and the history of, the institutions engaged in producing and representing cultural heritage.

Andrea teaches AIM 727 (Exhibitions) and AIM 715 (Virtual Heritage)

History and theory of museums

The uses of multimedia in exhibitions and heritage sites

Using heritage to develop cross-cultural understanding

The interpretation of difficult histories

Relations between museums and communities

Director, Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific
National Trust of Australia (Victoria), Collections Committee
Historians Special Interest Group Committee, Museums Australia
Member of editorial boards for the following Journals: International Journal of Cultural Studies (Sage); Museum and Society; International Journal of Heritage Studies (Routledge); Public History Review, MIDAS.

Current research projects include:
1) An ARC funded project, 'Collecting the West' (LP160100078) led by Prof Alistair Patterson from UWA and Prof. Andrea Witcomb from Deakin. Other Chief Investigators include Professor Jane Lydon, Professor Stephen Hopper; Professor Jenny Gregory; Dr Shino Konishi; Dr Jacqueline Van Gent; Dr Toby Burrows; Dr Tiffany Shellam. The industry partners include the Western Australian Museum, The Alexander State Library, the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Brittish Museum.

Recent projects include:

2) An ARC funded project, Australian Heritage Abroad: Managing Australia's Extraterritorial War Heritage (DP1094418). Andrea is the lead CI on this project with Prof. William Logan from CHCAP, Dr Bart Ziino (Deakin) and Professor Joan Beaumont (ANU).

3) An ARC funded project, "Collecting institutions: cultural diversity and the making of citizenship in Australia since the 1970s" (DP120100594). Andrea is the lead CI with A/Prof. Kylie Message (ANU), Dr Ian Mcshane (Swinburne), and PIs Prof. Simon Knell (Leicester University, UK) and Prof. Arne Amundsen (University of Oslo).

4) 'Museum Theory' a volume (co-editing with A/Prof. Kylie Message from the ANU) that is part of a series called the International Handbooks of Museum Studies commissioned by Blackwell. The general series is edited by Professor Sharon MacDonald and Dr Helen Rees Leahy.

5) A series of papers exploring the relationships between objects, exhibitions and affect.