Ancient Egypt Gallery, The Manchester Museum
Nick Merriman
Director of The Manchester Museum
Tel: 0161 275 2650
Email: nicholas.merriman@manchester.ac.uk
Research Profile
I have over 20 years' experience working in and around the museum sector, including eight years teaching Museum Studies and Cultural Heritage at University College London. Over this time, my research interests have fallen broadly into the areas of participation and representation in museums, and of heritage management. My initial area of research was in the field of visitor studies and focused on the sociology of museum visiting. Whilst at the Museum of London I undertook action research into representation of minority communities in museums and also wrote on the growing problem of archaeological archives and their curation. This has led in turn to one of my current research interests, which is on museum collecting and sustainability, which looks at acquisition, disposal and management of museum collections in the context of ideas of memory and forgetting. I have also developed a research interest in public archaeology, especially looking at audiences for archaeology, ethnic diversity in audiences and the profession, and the deficit model in archaeological interpretation.
Supervision Areas
- Assessing acquisition & disposal rates of museum collecting
- Archaeological archives: use and exploitation
- New uses for natural history collections (e.g. engaging audiences around sustainability)
- Models and miniatures in museums
- Archaeology and minority ethnic participation
Current and Former PhD students
- Glenn Wharton: Heritage Conservation as Cultural Work: Public Negotiation of a Pacific Hero (passed Oct 2004)
- Beverley Butler: Return to Alexandria: Cultural Revivalism and the Alexandria Project (passed Nov 2003)
- Yi Fung Chen: `Public Willingness to Pay for Admission to Museums: case study from Taiwan' (second supervisor: passed Nov 2001)
- Cathy Pearson; `Curators, Culture and Conflict: Understanding the Effects and Consequences of the Second World War on the UK's museums, 1938-1965' (passed Sept 2007)
- Vassia Kyriakopoulou; `Meaning-making at under-interpreted Bronze Age sites in Greece' (passed Jan 2009)
- Hannah Chalk 'How are natural objects attributed value?' (ongoing, University of Manchester)
Selected List of Publications
Books
- Merriman N (ed), Public Archaeology. (edited and with introduction and paper on museums by N. Merriman) 2004. Routledge, London.
- Merriman N (ed), Making Early Histories in Museums (edited and with introduction by N. Merriman). 1999. Leicester University Press.
- Merriman N (ed), The Peopling of London: Overseas Settlement from Prehistoric Times to Present. (edited and with introduction by N. Merriman). Reaktion Books/Museum of London, 1993.
- Merriman, N. Beyond The Glass Case: The Past, the Heritage and the Public in Britain. Leicester University Press, 1991.
- Translation (with Caroline Beattie): The Love of Art: European Art Museums and their Public. By Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel, with Dominique Schnapper. Polity Press, 1991.
Articles
- Merriman, N. (2008) 'Museum collecting and sustainability'. Museum Management & Curatorship 17 (1): 3-21
- Merriman, N. (2002) 'Archaeology, Heritage and Interpretation' in Cunliffe, B., Davies, W. & Renfrew, C. (eds). Archaeology: The Widening Debate. British Academy/Oxford University Press.
- Merriman, N. (2000) 'The Crisis of Representation in Archaeological Museums' in A. Hatton & F. McManamon (eds) Heritage Conservation in Modern Society, One World Archaeology Series, Routledge.
- Merriman, N. & Swain, H. (1999) 'Archaeological Archives: Serving the Public Interest?' European Journal of Archaeology 2(2): 249-67.
- Merriman, N. (1997) 'The Peopling of London project' in E. Hooper-Greenhill (ed.) Cultural Diversity: Developing Museum Audiences in Britain. Leicester University Press, 119-148.