Page 13 - Museums, Media and Cultural Theory In Cultural and Media Studies

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book was produced thanks to research leave funding from the Arts and
Humanities Research Council and the University of the West of England,
Bristol. It was cooked up in the past two years, but has been marinating for
nearly ten. My interest in museums has developed through my teaching in the
School of Cultural Studies at the University of the West of England, in particu-
lar my teaching of a module called The Politics of Collecting and Display. I am
indebted to the groups of students who took this class, for their observations
and ideas have often remained with me and must have left their traces on this
book too. I would like to thank all my colleagues in the school of Cultural
Studies at the University of the West of England for their interest and support. I
feel very privileged to work with them. In particular I am indebted to Ben
Highmore, both as a good friend and as a colleague whose understanding of
cultural studies and interest in exhibitions reassures me that my interests and
passions are not peripheral to the field. In early 2005 we gave a paper at a
symposium on world’s fairs organized by the Royal College of Art and held at
the Victoria and Albert Museum. Preparing that paper gave me a clearer sense
of our mutual interest in experience and affect, and that, in turn, has shaped
parts of this book.
I would also like to extend special thanks to Richard Hornsey, and Gillian
Swanson, for inspiring conversations and for reading early drafts of chapter
sections and to Adam Nieman for reading and commenting so helpfully on part
of Chapter 3. I benefited enormously from a Masterclass in Museums and
Heritage Agencies in Leiden, the Netherlands, in November 2004. This was
organized by the International Institute for Asian Studies and the National
Museum of Ethnology. I would like to thank Amaraswar Galla and all the