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About Centre for Museology

The word museology means the science of museums and research into museal processes such as collection, registration, preservation and communication. Centre for Museology consists of researchers from Aarhus University and other institutions.

What we have in common is that we deal in very different ways with how society, currently and historically, selects, institutionalises and communicates the values that people wish to preserve as a common cultural, art and natural heritage.

Museology is an interdisciplinary field of research

Several of the centre’s researchers take an art-historical angle on museology, but there are also members from classical archaeology, dramaturgy, business communication, CAVI, language programmes etc.

We also collaborate with museum related programs at Aarhus University on, among other things, the following: research seminars, and we welcome other scholars with an interest in the history, methodology and subject matter of museology.

The Centre for Museology has a shared research-related interest in the museum as a social organisation and its communication with the outside world in a historical and contemporary perspective.

What do we do?

A number of the associated researchers share an interest in and experience of collaborating with external partners and developing models for research projects between universities, museums, educational activities (e.g. primary school and upper secondary school) and other cultural institutions.

The purpose of the centre is to initiate new research projects, seminars, study circles, conferences, study trips and publications related to the museological research field at Aarhus University. In this context, the centre will focus in particular on exploring and developing funding opportunities for museological research. The participants in Centre for Museology are concerned with these themes:

  • Institutional changes and the formation of new organisation types in the museological field in a European perspective
  • Dynamics between material and immaterial forms of art, nature and culture and their processes of collection and museisation
  • The relationship between user participation and new museal resource economics
  • The importance of digitisation for museological forms of communication and museal methods of preservation

We work together

Centre for Museology collaborates with a wide range of universities, cultural institutions and museums. Read more under Network and Education.