The Science Museum supports a thriving programme of research which aims to promote new ways of understanding our collections, audiences and exhibitions.
The Research and Public History department delivers academic quality research to our collections, audiences and concerns. See current and past research on our projects page.
Learn about opportunities for high-calibre biomedical researchers to carry out research with visitor volunteers in the Science Museum’s contemporary science wing.
We aim to become the world’s most research-informed science museum group by 2022, building on our core strengths and developing our expertise.
research and public history team
Our researchers come from a range of academic disciplines and engage with the specific practices of the museum as well as more theoretical work on the themes of historical and contemporary science, technology and medicine.
The Research and Public History Department supports grant applications led by the Science Museum and partner universities as well as a growing programme of conferences, workshops and other events.
Tim is Head of Research & Public History and a historian of the public culture of science. He is responsible for overseeing and developing the Science Museum Group’s Research & Public History programmes. His exhibitions include Health Matters (1994) and Making the Modern World (2000). His first book, Films of Fact, was published in 2008, and he is co-editor (with Frode Weium) of Artefacts: Material Culture and Electronic Sound (2013). For three years from November 2021, he is Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded project, The Congruence Engine: Digital Tools for New Collections-Based Industrial Histories, a Discovery Project under the Towards a National Collection funding stream. Tim was President of the British Society for the History of Science 2018–20, and has served on the AHRC Advisory Board.
Scott Anthony is Deputy Head of Research & Public History for the Science Museum Group. He is also a historian of propaganda, public relations and cultural diplomacy who received his DPhil from the University of Oxford. He has taught at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (where he created the first Public and Applied history programme in Southeast Asia), as well as the universities of Cambridge, Manchester and Warwick.
He has worked as a Strategic Communications Consultant to the UK government and as a journalist contributing to media including most recently the BBC, Times Higher, London Review of Books Blog, Air Mail and The Spectator. He has won major grants and fellowships in Africa, Asia, and North America. He has acted as researcher, consultant, and curator with institutions including the British Telecom Heritage, the Postal Museum & Archive, British Airways Heritage, and the British Film Institute. His books include The Story of Propaganda Film (2023), Shell: Art and Advertising (2021) and Public Relations and the Making of Modern Britain (2012).
Alison is currently on secondment from her permanent role in the Research and Public History team to the One Collection team where she is working on research engagement with the Science Museum Group’s stored collections at the National Collections Centre (opening in 2024). She has been working in research at the Science Museum since the completion of her doctorate with the geography department at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2013.
She has acted as a co-investigator on several funded research projects which have focussed on collections-based research methodologies, participatory practice, emotional geographies, and digital interventions in museum collections. Alison has published in academic journals and has most recently co-edited the book ‘Exploring Emotion, Care and Enthusiasm in ‘Unloved’ Museum Collections,’ (2020). She is currently working on the role of the museum store in historical and contemporary museum practice.
As Research Support Officer, Carol is responsible for developing budgets for research grant applications and managing post-award project finance and reporting. She is the key contact for the research events programme, liaising with external and internal stakeholders to deliver research events. Carol also works with students, fellows and associates, and Research Department colleagues to ensure the smooth running of the department.
Carol is a UCL-trained museum researcher specialising in audience research and museum learning, and is experienced in managing international cultural projects and developing research in East Asian museum context. She has successfully delivered two AHRC-funded projects, including Time, Culture and Identity: the co-creation of historical research and the co-development of visitor experience in China and the UK (2019–2020) and Producing/Consuming Romantic Scotland: exhibition, heritage, nations and the Chinese market (2017–2018). Carol will be Co-Investigator for Communicating Time and Culture: Championing a global perspective in science and technology through public engagement, starting December 2022.
As Research Grants Manager for the Science Museum Group, Kathleen is responsible for the development and management of all grant-based research at Science Museum Group’s five national museum sites. Kathleen is also a historian of medicine and science and received her PhD from University College London. She has published various articles and a monograph (Medieval Pets, Boydell & Brewer, 2012 – the first study of companion animals in the medieval period) along with popular history books on animals. Her research focuses on premodern medicine, natural history and animal-human relationships, including medieval toxicology and animals bites (the focus of a Wellcome Trust Fellowship Grant, University of York), translations of medical and natural history texts from Arabic to Latin in the medieval period, premodern pharmacology, late medieval magic and cosmology (University College London), early modern ageing, skin disease and animal diseases and skin (King’s College London, Renaissance Skin project). She is currently working on a project examining premodern zoonotic disease, including rabies, plague, scabies and leprosy.
As Research Manager, Nicola develops and oversees the Group’s postgraduate and research skills activities, including the Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme, research events, staff research training, and convening and teaching on the Curating Science and Technology Master’s course with UCL.
Nicola is also a historian, focusing on colonial ‘ethnographic’ collections and the perspectives of those who have made, collected or otherwise engaged with this material. They are finishing up a PhD with the British Museum and Royal Holloway, University of London, which explores colonial attitudes towards items of Aboriginal cultural heritage from Western Australia that were taken to Britain during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Kate is the Editor-in-Chief of the Science Museum Group Journal, the scholarly, open-access, online journal published by the Science Museum Group, which presents peer-reviewed articles from staff and external authors on topics of interest to science museums. Kate supports internal staff to develop writing and publishing skills as well as editing external submissions through to publication in two Journal issues per year. Forthcoming projects include an updating of the Journal’s design and architecture so that it works even better for readers and authors. Kate has degrees in both history and psychology and has worked in museums for over 20 years as a Learning Officer, an Exhibition Developer and as Head of Audience Research. Her publications include King, H, Steiner, K, Hobson, M, Robinson, A and Clipson, H, 2015, ‘Highlighting the value of evidence-based evaluation: pushing back on demands for “impact”’, JCOM: Journal of Science Communication (Vol 14, Issue 2).
Richard is the Assistant Editor of the Science Museum Group Journal, an online publication which presents the global research community with peer-reviewed papers relevant to the wide-ranging work of the Group. Richard has helped oversee the development of the Journal from its inception in 2014 through to the present day, and he is chiefly concerned with the Journal’s back-end functionality and editorial design. The Journal continues to enjoy a steady increase in readership numbers and contributions, and Richard is currently involved in a redevelopment of the Journal website and expansion of research outputs. He is also responsible for supporting internal staff to develop writing and publishing skills, as well as editing external submissions through to publication. Richard comes from a background in science journalism and science consultancy.
