People Magazine, Museum Studies, and me.

When People Magazine starts writing articles about graduate level Museum Studies departments, it is probably as good a time as ever to announce that I, too, am a student in that department.

I’m pleased to share that I am now a PhD student at the UK’s University of Leicester School of Museum Studies in their part-time distance learning division.   It’s an honor (honour?) to be studying at the top museum research school in the world under the direction of their faculty scholars.  What’s that feeling? Oh, that’s the “Impostor Syndrome” hitting me now.

Doing this degree by distance learning is amazingly logical once one wraps their head around how the British educational system works.  There, PhD students already have their Masters degrees, so there is no taught component – therefore, the meetings with one’s advisor are via Skype, scholarly articles are emailed, and research is conducted at any museum around the world.  This also means that I’m still living and working (full-time at Antenna) on this side of the Atlantic.

I’m not quite ready to share the details of my research topic just yet.  For those of you who do know me, you won’t be surprised; it combines my interest in the behind-the-scenes of museums with my favorite hobby, reading things on the Internet.

So here is the first post of my PhD blog, which will soon be full of my hopefully astute, thought provoking postgraduate insights about the museum world.

And congratulations Princess Mako on your graduation, from your fellow student for a day and a half.