Working on collections development, facilitating workshops to assess and shape Intoart‘s collection strategy and information management.

Developing a combined digital collections strategy and metadata enhancement programme for Bradford District Museums & Galleries. Improving collections data and workflows while producing a practical plan for future CMS transition, digital access, and sustainable digital infrastructure.

Commissioned to develop a comprehensive Archive Plan for the Living Legacies project. Created frameworks for copyright clearance, Creative Commons licensing, digitisation protocols, and archive management, including workflows, resource planning, and volunteer/trainee participation. The project was subsequently successfully awarded £1,675,222 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

The First Decade Project (2015) presents objects, documents, interviews and images charting the first ten years of the Crafts Council, the collections and their makers. New material and information was added to give context and depth to understanding of the objects, archives and formative years. You can scroll through the timeline, browse through themed selections or simply search for a maker or object or period to find out more about this rich and exciting period of making and craft development.

https://collections.craftscouncil.org.uk/first-decade

September 2024: co-authored with Sara Perry, Katrina Foxton and Anna-Maria Sichani, Ethics as Practice: Report on the 1st Discovery Project Ethics Workshop, a TanC report.

A short reponse entitled in Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice, edited by Cara Krmpotich and Alice Stevenson, London, UCL Press.

Co-authored with Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, “Provisional Semantics: Addressing the Challenges of Representing Multiple Perspectives within Public Collections.” Collections, 26 Feb. 2024.

Co-authored with Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, Against a New Orthodoxy: Decolonised “Objectivity” in the Cataloguing and Description of Artworks a featured essay for the Paul Mellon Center Photographic Archive web site, 8 December 2021

Spring 2026

The Transforming Collections project (2021-2024) is driven by the belief that a national collection cannot be imagined without addressing structural inequalities in the arts. Research will be carried out by an interdisciplinary team of colleagues from UAL’s  Decolonising Arts Institute and UAL Creative Computing Institute working closely with Tate, and a further 15 national and international collection and archive partners. The project is part of the 5 year AHRC funding programme, Towards a National Collection (TANC)
Project Page
Second Report, 2023

This AHRC/TaNC funded research project (2020-22) led by Tate Research focused on how museums and heritage organisations can engage in decolonising practices to produce search terms, catalogue entries and interpretations fit for purpose for an evolving digitised national collection. Project page: https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/provisional-semantics

Final Report, 2022

Interim Report 2020

I undertook post-graduate research at UCL’s Centre for Digital Humanities between 2014 and 2020. The focus of my research was the online museum object record and the information that it presents. Through a detailed, comparative study of two museum-type collections (the Museum of the Home, and UCL’s Galton Collection), their histories and documentation, I explored the historical, social and technical circumstances that have converged to produce digital records and present object information online in current UK museum practice.

A presentation for Intoart’s Why Collections Matter event, for the
Intoart Annual Exhibition at the Copeland Gallery, October 2025.

A panel presentation at The European Working Conference on Collections from Colonial Contexts, held in Leiden in 2025.

Conference presentation Do ‘Words Matter’ in Machine Learning? at CIDOC 2024, Sustainable Connections: Building Knowledge Networks Conference, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. November 2024.

Workshop and keynote lecture Provisional Inclusion: Can collections research/projects/work ever be genuinely ethical and equitable? for Teesside University & MIMA Higher Degree Apprenticeship Module: Curation, collections, and access. June 2024

Keynote address and workshop Object Image Text Digital: Ethical cataloguing practice and the digitisation of GLAM collections, Latent Space: From Datasets to Digital Heritage. London: Vasari Institute, Birkbeck, University of London. June 2023

Co-authored with Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, Provisional Inclusion: Can collections research projects ever be genuinely ethical and equitable? for the Towards a National Collection Conference 2023: Unlocking the Potential of Digital Collections’, at the British Museum, 26 April 2023 

Presentation for the ARLIS Cataloguing and Classification Committee ethics series.

Keynote lecture, with Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, Making the case for slow cataloguing  Collections Trust Conference 2022: Rethinking Cataloguing, 6 October 2022

Co-authored with Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, Trophies of Empire: modes of acquisition, legitimization and colonial denial in art and heritage interpretation, for the ‘Plunder: An Alternative History of Art’ session at the AAH Conference, London, 6-8 April 2022

Presentation for the Rethinking cataloguing, classification and digital presence session, at the Rethinking museum practices: decolonizing collections conference, CIDOC, COMCOL and ICOM Brasil, 7 December 2021

Presentation for the Irish Museums Association Decolonising the Catalogues conference, 26 November 2021

Presentation for Decolonising the Database event, Centre for Design History, University of Brighton, 5 July 2021

Discussion panel – Curatorial Mediation with Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, Cheryl Bowen, Charlotte Holmes and Deirdre Osbourn for Exhibiting Embarrassment: Museums, Public Culture and Consequentialist Aesthetics Symposium, 4 June 2021

Presentation for Doing the Work: Documenting Collections, for Contemporary Art Society and the Decolonising Arts Institute, UAL, 24 March 2021

A webinar with JC Niala, Andrea Wallace, Mathilde Pavis, Kelly Foster, Tehmina Goskar, Abira Hussein and Shelley Angelie Saggar, 17 November 2021.