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Staff Tutor and Lecturer, The Open University, The Open University

I am an academic, curator and researcher with wide-reaching interests from art and graphic design, to museums, their collections and the stories they tell.

I have an academic background in art history, museum and heritage studies, with a particular interest in how propaganda art and design from Twentieth Century China and most recently, Chinese Diaspora communities, are collected, interpreted and displayed in British museums.

I have worked in museums as a curator and researcher, and has taught art history and museum and heritage studies at Loughborough University, the University of Warwick, the University of Leicester and De Montfort University. I have also also worked as a heritage consultant, producing interpretation plans and undertaking audience development research for HLF-funded projects across the UK. Between 2010 and 2012, she was part of the exhibition development team for 'Suits and Saris', at New Walk Museum & Art Gallery, Leicester, which was part of the East Midland's 'Dress the World' strand of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

In 2015, I undertook a cataloguing project of post-1949 Chinese posters in the British Library's collection, funded by the British Inter-University China Centre (BICC). This project has enhanced the visibility of the collection and has made the posters more accessible to a wider audience of researchers. Since November 2019, I have been employed as a Staff Tutor in Art History at the Open University.

I am the author of a monograph, Museum Representations of Maoist China (Ashgate/Routledge, 2014) and several edited volumes; the most recent of which is A Museum Studies Approach to Heritage (Routledge, 2018). I have been a reviewer for Museum and Society, Nordisk Museologi, Routledge and Channel View Publications.

Experience

  • –present
    Research Associate, Museum and Heritage Studies, University of Leicester

Education

  • 2010 
    University of Leicester, PhD Museum Studies