Birkbeck, University of London

MUSEUM CULTURES (MA)

The MA Museum Cultures offers you the opportunity to study this expanding and dynamic field in close proximity to world-distinguished museums and galleries. If you are contemplating a career in the museum and gallery sector and want to understand contemporary debates about museums and their cultural significance, then this is the course for you. Museums have been of enormous importance in shaping empires, nations and cities, and their collections are connected to wider histories of conflict and social change. To study museums is to study the development and fierce contestation of our collective cultural imagination and memory. 

Our MA gives you the chance to develop a range of key skills, from critical thinking and writing to practical experience through a supervised work placement in a museum, gallery or archive. Previous work placements have been offered at the Tate, British Museum, Whitechapel Gallery and Horniman Museum. Past students have helped design and run schools programmes, documented collections that were previously uncatalogued, conducted visitor research and assisted curators in producing exhibitions. As well as regular gallery and museum visits, we also offer an exciting study trip abroad every spring. 

With our location in Bloomsbury in central London, you can explore some of the world's best architecture, galleries and museums, collections and art spaces. The British Library is within close proximity as is the British Museum, Sir John Soane's Museum, Foundling Museum, Wellcome Gallery, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Modern and V&A. 

You begin with a core course that introduces interdisciplinary perspectives on the study of museums and a research skills module where you work collaboratively with your classmates. You then take two options in areas of specialist interest and either an independent research project or a work placement. Finally, you will be individually counselled in your choice of dissertation topic.