People

Fiona Candlin, Professor of Museology in the School of Historical Studies Birkbeck, University of London  

Fiona Candlin is Director of the MMLab and Principal Investigator on Mapping Museums, Museums in the Pandemic, and Museum Closure. She has published extensively on museums including Stories from Small Museums (Manchester University Press 2022); Micromuseology: An analysis of small independent museums (Bloomsbury 2015); Art, Museums, and Touch (Manchester University Press 2010), and The Object Reader (Routledge 2009). 


Alexandra Poulovassilis, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and College Fellow in the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London.  

Alexandra devised the initial Mapping Museums project with Fiona Candlin and has been Co-investigator on Mapping Museums, Museums in the Pandemic, and Museum Closure.  Her research interests are in data integration, querying, visualisation, and personalisation. She has held numerous research grants in these areas, many of them pursuing interdisciplinary research in collaboration with domain experts from education, the arts and the sciences.  


Dr Andrea Ballatore, Lecturer in Social and Cultural Informatics at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London  

Andrea is Co-Investigator on the Museum Closure and Museums in the Pandemic projects, was a contributing to the Mapping Museums research, and leads Museum Analytics with Jamie Larkin. Previously he was Co-Investigator on the Museums in the Pandemic and a contributing member of the Mapping Museums research.  His research combines geographic data science and user-generated content to study the geographies of the cultural sector. 


Peter Wood, Professor of Computer Science, in the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London.  

Peter is Co-Investigator on the Museum Closure and Museums in the Pandemic projects. His research is in data management, in particular query processing and optimisation.  Apart from his involvement in the MMLab, he is also a co-investigator on the ‘Action against Stunting Hub’, a GCRF-funded project aiming to address the causes of childhood stunting. 


Dr Jamie Larkin, Assistant Professor | Culture, Media and Creative Industries Warwick University 

Jamie leads the Museum Analytics project with Andrea Ballatore. Previously he was the Researcher on the Mapping Museums project and a contributor to the Museums in the Pandemic project. His research interests include museum histories, cultural policy, and the commercial development of the UK museum sector. 


Dr Mark Liebenrood, School of Historical Studies Birkbeck, University of London 

Mark is the Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Museums on the Museum Closure project. He was previously a part-time research assistant on Mapping Museums and part-time researcher on Museums in the Pandemic. He completed his PhD on closed museums at Birkbeck in 2022 and was a Visiting Early Career Fellow at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester, 2022–23.  


George Wright, School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences , Birkbeck, University of London. 

George is is the Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Computer Science on the research project ‘Museum Closure in the UK’. His PhD is in Natural Language Processing. 


Dr Katy Pettit, School of Historical Studies Birkbeck, University of London 

Katy is the Research administrator for the MMLab. Her PhD is about late Victorian and Edwardian East End culture.  

Past MMLab members 

Dr Toby Butler organised and conducted the interview-based research with founders, staff, and volunteers from over forty museums. He is currently Reader in the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway University of London and Principal Investigator on a 3-year AHRC funded project ‘An Oral History of the Environmental Movement 1970-2020’.  

Dr Val Katerinchuk was the Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Computer Science on the Mapping Museums project. He Post-designed additional functionality for the database and web application, and developed the project website. He continues to work as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Computer Science on other projects at Birkbeck.  

Nick Larson was the Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Computer Science on the Mapping Museums project. He developed the first version of the project database and web application. 

Ekaterina Mityurova was a short-term Research Assistant on Museums in the Pandemic. She assisted with the analysis of social media data.  

Dr Jake Watts was the Postdoctoral Research Fellow for Museum History on the Mapping Museums project. He conducted a wide range of historical, social, cultural, and economic research that informed the overall research analysis. He is now training to be a lawyer.  

Advisory Board  

Adrian Babbidge, museums consultant

Ian Leete, Senior policy advisor on Local Government Museums, Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport 

Lisa Ollerhead, Director of the Association of Independent Museums (AIM) 

Gillian Simison, Grants Development Officer, Museums Galleries Scotland  

George Stanley Jones, Head of museums policy, Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport 

Frank Trentmann, Professor of History, Birkbeck  

Isabel Wilson, Regional museums manager, Arts Council England (ACE) 

With thanks to previous members of the Advisory Board: Kate Bellamy, Director of Museums at ACE; Emma Chaplin and Tamalie Newbury, both directors of AIM; Isabel Churcher, Strategic Partnerships Manager at ACE; Stefan Dickers, Director of the Bishopsgate Institute Archive; Dr Andy Flinn, Reader in Archival Studies and Oral History, University College London; Fiona Talbot, Head of Policy for the National Heritage Lottery Fund, and Joe Traynor, Museums Galleries Scotland.