I'm working on a proposal for our Research Cultures fund (for DAHL), aiming to develop better support for the use of digital tools throughout the research cycle. It's important to remember the less visible more everyday activities that make for great research, and support them better.

This morning it is appropriate to recall the words of esteemed cultural commentator E Blackadder:

"Needs must when the Devil vomits in your kettle."

Normal service and academic standards will resume shortly.

New Valve Steam Frame VR headset. Seems to be very well designed, using more advanced optical science. And it is modular. It has fast foveated streaming. It can play Steam and PC games. Easier for us to develop Arts and Humanities experiences for it.
youtu.be/b7q2CS8HDHU?...

Focusing just on the peer-reviewed publication end of the spectrum leaves out crucial steps that (especially in 'longer-form' disciplines) lead to excellent work.

Reading groups, work-in-progress seminars, conferences, series editors. All are crucial, & all are being devalued/defunded. 2/3

Publish & perish?

'Publishing less--but better--will be essential to the future health of research.'

Yes, up to a point. Not grappled with here is that reducing volume alone fails to address intellectual PROCESS. Esp. for big projects, we need intellectual waystations to hone our research. 1/3

There's an assumption that if we just published less, we'd publish better. That's ridiculous. 'Better' entails a whole host of factors, of which time--essential through it is--is only 1. If we don't think of the whole system of intellectual formation--and how it varies across fields, we're sunk. 3/3

These guys are meeting in the same building as the museums conference. We are seriously considering breaking in, holding them hostage, and demanding a million pounds. I think we outnumber them. We have curators. You don't mess with curators.

Really interesting project. We will find out more about it, along with our partners in the Digital Arts and Humanities Lab at Warwick.

Re-exhibiting the museum: new perspectives on nineteenth-century exhibition, collection, and display.

The conference opened with a short talk contextualising in relation to the early history of the V&A, by Mary Clayton-Kastenholz.

Birmingham, outside the Library, theatre, and exhibition centre. Makers of the modern world. It all started here!

This is The Exchange, opposite Birmingham Library. An event location belonging to Birmingham Uni, open to the public. It has exhibitions dotted around.

Today we are a conference.

Last month we did our first museum trip with students, to Oxford. Here's the video.

We plan to do many more, hopefully with bigger numbers using a mini bus.

youtu.be/k2wzOA5In4o?...

Last week CCMPS at Warwick hosted a great talk by Andrea Wallace from the Law School, director of GLAM-Elab. We learned about the need to go beyond physical rights to cultural artefacts in museums, and consider the intellectual property rights of the communities from which they were appropriated.

Join us online on 2 Dec for ‘Old, New, Precarious Data’, the 1st event of the 2025-6 @dh-researchhub.bsky.social seminar series on incompleteness & loss in digital cultural heritage collections. Speakers include @beatricecannelli.bsky.social, @heatherfro.bsky.social, Leontien Talboom & Amelia Acker

Visit to Compton Verney near Stratford in Warwickshire to discuss student projects. Inspiring and challenging exhibits. They have colourful koans by Liliane Lijn, which are very special to Warwick Uni people, as we have a full size koan by Lijn at the heart of the uni.

Design Museum, London, last week. Presenting our Future Observatory funded VR project on retrofitting homes for sustainability. The museum tells the story of design brilliantly, but is also designed as a learning and research studio. Desks under exhibits with activities and materials. Brilliant!

On Wednesday 15th October we will be visiting Oxford University museums to record videos and podcasts. We have two spaces available for Arts Faculty students, and two for Maths Department students. Interested?

Apply here: warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/dal...

Welcome to @museumexplorations on Bluesky. News and events from the Museum Studies Network in and around the University of Warwick, England.

Listen to our podcasts with museum professionals and visitors.

Watch our video tours of museums and exhibitions.

warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/dal...