PhD Museum Studies, UK | Doctoral museum, heritage and archive studies

Details of PhD Museum Studies and heritage studies

Our researchers come together as part of the museums, archives and exhibitions strand of the university's Centre for Design History. We host a thriving postgraduate community and a lively programme of talks by practitioners, and many of our researchers develop projects that work in formal collaboration and co-produced research with global museums, collections and galleries.

The University of Brighton's research in museum studies has explored explored a wide range of themes relating to museum and heritage studies. Some themes of our staff and PhD student researchers' work include: 

• Archival practices for art, design and photographic collections
• Artist interventions and critique
• Co-production and collaboration
• Collecting and collections histories
• Emotions and materiality in museums, collections and archives
• Exhibitions and collecting in everyday life 
• Exhibition design histories
• Conservation and accessibility practices in museums and archives
• Cultural diplomacy in exhibitions and museums
• Curation and public inclusion
• Digital technologies for access and participation, including AI and 3D technologies including printing and heritage computing.
• Exhibitions for social and political change
• Fashion and dress history collections
• Feminist, activist, decolonial and post-colonial practices
• Historical and contemporary practices of exhibition design
• Landmark exhibitions across the world
• Politics and ethics of representation
• Professionalisation and professional practice in museums (histories and contemporary practice)
• Repatriation and restitution
• Transnational flows of practice including from and through the Global South
• Visitor studies

Research at the University of Brighton offers real opportunities to develop wide social and economic impact. We have a long tradition of securing research studentships through the AHRC and have led successful collaborative doctoral awards with the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Design Museum, the Imperial War Museum and the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers. Close professional contact for PhD students has also seen innovative research collaborations with institutions such as Kew Gardens, the Horniman Museum and Black Country Visual Archives as well as with locally held collections and centres of historical interest such as the University of Brighton Design Archives; Brighton and Hove Museums, with its collection of decorative art and design of designated international status; the Keep, East Sussex Record Office; Ditchling Museum, and the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill.

Poster detail, 'For Liberty Exhibition', held at the blitzed site of John Lewis, Oxford Street, 1943. Used in research by Dr Harriet Atkinson, 'The Materialisation of Persuasion': Modernist Exhibitions in Britain for Propaganda and Resistance, 1933 to 1953

Research supervisors for your PhD doctoral research programme

The Designs on Britain exhibition, curated by the Jewish Museum, London, 2018, included loans and collaboration with the University of Brighton Design Archives.

You will benefit from research supervision comprising two or maximum three members of academic staff.  

As well as the expertise from researchers in museum and archive studies there are opportunities for supervision from across the university's wider disciplines incorporating, for example, design history, dress history, design, politics, philosophy, sociology, ecology, media, heritage computing film, photography, fine art and cultural history. Depending on your research specialism a third supervisor may be an external partner working in the museum and heritage sector. 

You will identify your primary potential supervisor in design from the early stages of application and they will usually then support you throughout your programme of study, helping you find any additional support, carry out your research interests, guiding your learning of rigorous research methods and preparing you for the next stage of your career.

You should consider the staff listed below and create a short draft research proposal identifying your suitability for supervision from that person's research specialism.

Research training and support

PhD students in museum, heritage and archive studies are offered a range of developmental opportunities to help challenge and broaden their academic and professional thinking, including archivists and academics in the University of Brighton Design Archives. There are opportunities to develop skills towards your PhD and prepare for life beyond it. These might include writing skills and project management, conference presentation preparation, research planning and publication activities as well as grant applications and network-building, digital storytelling or developing a public profile. Read more about our doctoral training provision.

As a member of the Brighton Doctoral College, you will benefit from regular opportunities on a training programme designed to support postgraduate researchers at all stages of the PhD and help them achieve their career goals. Attendance at appropriate workshops within this programme is encouraged, as is contribution to the various seminar series hosted by the schools and the annual Postgraduate Research Festival. Academic and technical staff also provide more subject-specific training.

Museum and design researchers, Dr Megha Rajguru and Dr Claire Wintle, examine materials in the University of Brighton Design Archives.

Resources for PhD Museum Studies students 

Working on the mannequins in the Fashion Hall of the Britain Can Make It Exhibition, 1946. DCA-30-2-32-26. Design Council Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives.

You will benefit from access to international research resources, including a contemporary range of electronic resources via the university’s Online Library, as well as the physical book and journal collections housed within campus libraries. The library services are connected to national and international collections and students also have the option of inter-library loans. 

As well as our centre of research and knowledge exchange excellence, the Centre for Design History, another important focus for many research initiatives has been the holdings of the internationally significant Design Archives, located in the university’s city campus. Consisting of a collection of over twenty specialist archives of individual designers and British and global design organisations from the twentieth century, they form the starting point for original research projects culminating in PhD theses, publications and exhibitions. We are also the home of the Screen Archive South East, its collection of historic film and reputation for film and heritage research.

The university's system of research centres and groups, Centres of Research and Knowledge Exchange Excellence (COREs) and Research Excellence Groups (REGs), offers further opportunities to share your research with other scholars. Design history doctorate students have have joined, for example: 

• Centre for Design History
• Centre for Arts and Wellbeing
• Material History Research Excellence Group
• Photography Research Excellence Group
• Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender

Selected, recently completed doctoral degree theses in museum studies, heritage and archival studies

• The doors of archival perception: expanding art and design history through archive practice Breakell, S (2025) 
• Priorities, Inclusions, and Exclusions: Curatorial Collecting Practices and The Acquisition of Mid- to Late-Twentieth-Century Fashion by UK Museums Since 1960. A Case Study of Worthing Museum and Art Gallery, Debono, K. (2025)
• From company museum to national collection, 1927-2023: telling the story of popular photography through the Kodak Museum Collection, Knight, J. (2024)
• Making a museum: Documenting change at the Design Museum, London, 1979 to 2016, Farrelly, L. (2024)
• Museum visitors and colonial pasts : engagements with contemporary exhibitions, Potts, A. (2024)
• British South Asian experiences of collaborative exhibition-making, 1971 to 2008, Williams, H. (2024)
• Museum Correspondences: Social, material, and conceptual relations between the British Museum and Nigerian Antiquities Service, c.1945-1970 Grout, N. (2022)
• Curation and the archive: entanglements of discourse and practice Bruchet, E. A. (2019)
• ICOGRADA: The International Council of Graphic Design Associations, 1963-2013: Transnational Interactions and Professional Networks in Graphic Design, Souza Dias, D. (2019)
• Memory in the Museum: Representing the Second World War in the Imperial War Museum, London 1960 – 2020 Tomasiewicz, K. (2019)

Evoluon Museum in Eindhoven for NV Philips, 1966, exhibition design by James Gardner. LJG/3/4, James Gardner Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives. 

Supervisors for PhD museum studies