Working with feeling: workforce emotions in cultural heritage organisations

Research Seminar - Department of Art History and Cultural Practices, University of Manchester

----PLEASE NOTE: This event will take place in Room 4.206, University Place (University of Manchester)

Working with feeling: workforce emotions in cultural heritage organisations

Dr Jennie Morgan, Senior Lecturer, University of Stirling and Dr Anna Woodham, Senior Lecturer, King's College London

Abstract

In recent years, the recognition of emotions has arguably reshaped museum and heritage practice. Increasingly, institutions are embracing emotive topics, activities, and spaces that demonstrate the power of emotions to create meaningful audience experiences and to foster participation from diverse individuals and communities. Yet despite this “affective turn,” the experience, expression, and use of emotions within the cultural heritage workforce remain underexplored and under-supported. Where attention has been given, it has tended to focus on outward-facing areas of practice such as outreach, community engagement, and front-of-house work (e.g. Varutti, 2021, Morse, 2020, Munro, 2014) or specific groups of workers such as artists working in arts related health and wellbeing contexts (e.g. Naismith, 2019).

This research seminar will shift the focus inward, drawing attention to the “emotion work” of cultural heritage practitioners. We argue that the ability to manage and use emotions is now an essential skill for professionals tasked with delivering socially engaged missions and is potentially reshaping ideas of professionalism in the sector. To explore these arguments, we will present findings from our Royal Society of Edinburgh project New Futures of Care: Investigating Emotionally Laden Work in Museums, which explored this issue through knowledge-exchange workshops with practitioners, scholars, and sector representatives. These workshops revealed not only the prevalence but also the complexity of emotional labour across a wide range of roles, from collections care to institutional leadership. They highlighted the need to raise awareness, foster open discussion, value emotionally laden work, and develop stronger frameworks for recognising and supporting this typically hidden dimension of museum practice.

The seminar will also introduce emerging findings from an in-progress pilot study that aims to test the effectiveness of combining quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate workforce emotions. By reflecting on findings from across these research activities, we aim to underscore the importance of understanding staff emotions to be a key foundation for building sustainable, inclusive, and socially responsive cultural heritage institutions.

Biographies

Dr Jennie Morgan

Jennie Morgan is a Senior Lecturer in Heritage and Programme Director of the MSc Heritage at the University of Stirling. She co-led (with Woodham) a recent Royal Society of Edinburgh-funded project New Futures of Care: Investigating emotionally laden work in museums. Jennie's wider research focuses on museological change and professional identity, collections management, and museum curation, exploring interests as diverse as collections’ significance and value; curating profusion and sustainability; and object collections in heritage organisations focused on the built historic environment. As a trained anthropologist (PhD Manchester 2011), she holds expertise in short-term, sensory, and auto-ethnographic methods, also advocating for creative and collaborative methodologies (Bartolini and Morgan 2024, Morgan and Castle 2023). Jennie's work is published in a wide-range of journals, including the International Journal of Heritage Studies, Museum and Society, Qualitative Inquiry, Journal of Material Culture, and she co-authored the Heritage Futures: Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices book (Harrison et al. 2020). Having previously worked as a museum curator in New Zealand, Jennie is motivated by exploring and generating intersections between theoretical and applied impact.

Dr Anna Woodham

Anna Woodham is Senior Lecturer: Museum and Heritage Studies, Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London. Her current research examines the use of emotions by cultural heritage practitioners. In 2024-25 she was co-lead on the Royal Society of Edinburgh-funded project New Futures of Care, Investigating emotionally laden work in museums (with Morgan). Anna’s research has also focused on collections development, care, and management. She has served as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on several AHRC-funded projects, including: Integrating Forms of Care: Building Communities of Practice around Reserve Collections, Enduring Connections: Heritage, Sustainable Development and Climate Change in Kiribati, and Who Cares? which led to the edited volume Exploring Emotion, Care and Enthusiasm in “Unloved” Collections. With a background in policy and practice, Anna has held posts at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the Fitzwilliam Museum, and the British Dental Association Museum.