Dr Charlotte Connelly, BSc (Hons), MSc, PhD

Institute Associate

Biography

Career

• 2023 - present, Institute Associate, Scott Polar Research Institute
• 2023 - present, Head Curator, National Science and Media Museum
• 2015 - 2022, Museum Curator, The Polar Museum
• 2019 - 2022, Chair, University of Cambridge Museums Steering Group
• 2018 - 2019, Deputy Chair, University of Cambridge Museums Steering Group
• 2018 - 2019, Trustee, Museum of Cambridge
• 2012 - 2014, Content Developer for Information Age, the Science Museum
• 2010 - 2012, Assistant Curator of Computing and Communication, the Science Museum

Qualifications

• 2022 PhD History and Philosophy of Science. Thesis: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.96514
• 2010 MSc Museum Studies
• 2008 BSc History and Philosophy of Science

Awards and Affiliations

• 2019 Cambridge-Leibniz Museum and Collection Fellowship
• 2019-22 Associate Member of the Global Centre for Knowledge Studies
• 2014-present doctoral researcher in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Research

My research interests include understanding museum visitors' attitudes to environmental change, how the development of museum collections has influenced cultural attitudes and introduced or cemented particular biases in scientific practice, and how recreating the use of historic scientific instruments can help historians and museum visitors gain better insight into scientific ideas and processes. I am also interested in participatory practice in the development of exhibitions and displays.

Completed projects

• Co-lead: Environment Research Growth Network, part of the University of Cambridge Research and Collections Programme.
  • PI Project 2 within the network: Evidence based audience engagement with environmental issues
• Co-investigator: Legacies of Empire and Enslavement in University Natural History Museums and Collections, funded through the AHRC / NERC Hidden Histories of Environmental Science programme.

Supervision

I am on the supervision team for three doctoral projects, providing technical museum collections support as well as expertise relating to material culture studies and the history of science.

• Inside Out and Outside In: Participatory Methods for Science and Technology Collections.
• Instruments of scientific governance? Historical geographies of Halley Bay, 1956 – present. Alice Oates, 2019-2022 (expected)
• Gender and histories of Arctic field science, 1900-1950. Naï Zakharia, 2020-2023 (expected)

Publications

Articles

• Connelly, C.E. and Warrior, C., 2018. Survey stories in the history of British polar exploration: museums, objects and people. Notes and Records: the Royal Society journal of the history of science, doi:10.1098/rsnr.2018.0038.
• Connelly, C.E., 2017. How Antarctica became home to a new kind of scientific diplomacy. The Guardian.
• Kavanagh, J., McSweeney, K., Naula, D. and Connelly, C., 2014. Journey into participation: a viewpoint from the Science Museum, London. Participation Now.

Book chapters

• Connelly, C.E. and Change H. 2019. Galvanometers and the many lives of scientific instruments in Nall, J., Taub, L., & Willmoth, F. (eds). The Whipple Museum of the History of Science. Cambridge University Press.
• Connelly, C.E. 2019. A Tour of the Northwest Passage in Renata Tyszczuk, Joe Smith and Robert Butler (eds) Culture and Climate Change: Scenarios. Shed, Cambridge.
• Connelly, C.E., 2018. Climate Hack: Rapid Prototyping New Displays in Multi-disciplinary Museums, in Filho, W.L., Lackner, B. and McGhie, H. (eds.) Addressing the Challenges in Communicating Climate Change Across Various Audiences, Springer. p.517-530. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-98294-6_31.
• Connelly, C.E., 2014. The Cell; The Broadcast, in Blyth, T. (ed.) Information Age Six Networks That Changed Our World, Scala Arts Publishers Incorporated.