WIPSS: Politically Renewing Museum Spaces

In
13:30, 28 Oct 2016

Work in Progress in the Social Studies (WIPSS): 2016/7

20th ANNIVERSARY YEAR

Tuesday 8 November

Unapologetically Political and Sociological: Developing and Renewing Museum Spaces

Prof. Carmel Borg & Prof. Peter Mayo

University of Malta

Welcome to the second seminar of 2016/7 in the seminar series Work in Progress in the Social Studies (WIPSS). This academic year WIPSS celebrates its 20th anniversary, and in that context, we welcome Professors Carmel Borg and Peter Mayo with their paper entitled Unapologetically Political and Sociological: Developing and Renewing Museum Spaces, which should be of interest to a wide range of anthropologists and sociologists as well as heritage specialists. Carmel Borg and Peter Mayo write:

‘In the context of Malta’s Valletta 2018 commitment to maximise, popularise and ‘europeanise’ its cultural spaces, this paper examines the role of national museum spaces in the contemporary era of cultural hybridity, liquidity (Bauman, 2000) and mobility. Departing from a critical pedagogical framework, the paper examines how ‘national’ cultural sites which have historically served to reproduce hegemonic “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1991), can be genuinely transformed into “ecologies of cognition” (de Sousa Santos, 2006). These are dynamic public spaces where cognitive justice and democracy are affirmed. The role of curators as mediators of knowledges and as adult educators within mainly state-sponsored institutions will be interrogated. Also problematised is the notion of ‘national’ and ‘permanent collection’ in a Maltese context which is dynamic and cosmopolitan. In the final analysis, the paper will contribute to the ongoing search for greater participation of the Maltese publics in the formulation of national imaginations through active engagement in museum experiences.’

Carmel Borg is a former head of department and dean of the Faculty of Education, University of Malta. He lectures in curriculum studies, critical pedagogy, parental involvement in education, and community and adult education. He has authored and co-authored, presented, often as keynote speaker, and published extensively in several languages around the foregoing issues. As a public intellectual and community activist, Prof. Borg promotes education as a liberating experience and challenges technologies of oppression education as a liberating experience and challenges technologies of oppression within education systems. Borg has a long-standing involvement in curriculum development at all levels of the education process, locally and internationally. Professor Borg is the editor of the Malta Review of Education Research (MRER) and associate editor of several other peer-reviewed, international journals. He is also editor of the Education Research Monograph Series (ERMS).

Peter Mayo is professor in and head of the Department of Arts, Open Communities and Adult Education, Faculty of Education, University of Malta. His recent books include Politics of Indignation (Zero Books, 2012), Learning with Adults (co-authored with Leona English, Sense, 2012), Echoes from Freire for a Critically Engaged Pedagogy (Bloomsbury, 2013), and Hegemony and Education under Neoliberalism: Insights from Gramsci (Routledge, 2015).

Tuesday 8 November, 18:00-19:00, followed by discussion. In the Faculty of Arts Library, on the third floor of Old Humanities Building, at the end of the corridor next to Room 301. The stairs are in the corner of the quadrangle behind the Assembly Hall. Students are encouraged to attend. The public is cordially welcome.

Paul Clough

Peter Mayo

Michael Briguglio

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