Staff Profile

Background

My academic background is in art history and museum and heritage studies. I have also worked as a museum curator. I was formerly Head of Media, Culture Heritage, Global Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Pro-Vice Chancellor (Global). I co-authored Newcastle University's current Global Strategy. I have held visiting positions at the University of Oslo, Aarhus University and the Australian National University, where I am Honorary Professor at the Humanities Research Centre.

Research Interests

My scholarship is grounded in art history, museum studies, critical heritage studies, and memory studies. I borrow approaches and interests from anthropology, geography, cultural theory, political science, design research, digital cultures and the theory of history. Most of my current work explores heritage, memory and geopolitics, affect and emotion, ontology and epistemology, social conflict, and historical consciousness. I have led UKRI and EU awards on migration and museums, European heritage politics, and community heritages. I am currently at therapy beginning of a new strand of work on forests, linking heritage studies, new materialism, creative ethnography, and interests from the developing field of arboreal humanities.

I have written or edited books on:

• The Public Art Museum in 19th-Century Britain (Routledge 2005)
• Museums and the Construction of Disciplines (Bloomsbury 2009)
• Interpreting Art in Museums and Galleries (Routledge 2012).
• Museums, Migration and Identity in Europe (Ashgate/Routledge 2015)
• Dimensions of Heritage and Memory: Multiple Europes and the Politics of Crisis, (Routledge 2019)
• Plural Heritages and Community Co-production: designing, walking and remembering (Routledge 2021)
• Routledge International Handbook of Heritage and Politics (2024)
• Analysing Museum Display: theory and method (Routledge 2024).

Postgraduate Supervision

I am currently supervising the following doctoral research projects

• Posthuman and New Materialist Perspectives on the Rock Tombs of Kaș (Yelyzaveta Nesterova)
• Museums of Peace (Natalie Heidaripour)
• Visitor Experience at Australian Community Museums (Brian Kalms) [at Australian National University]

I have supervised Claire Pike, Susannah Eckersley, Gabriella Petkova, Pamela Erskine-Loftus, Alex Elwick, Yun-ju Chen, Bronwen Colquhoun, Emma Coffield, Gabriella Arrigoni, Carolyn Gibeson, Rebecca Farley, Jen Locke, Tom Hopkin, David Farrell-Banks, Briony Carlin, Alistair Robinson, Hannah Marsden, and Muhammed Topdaş, all of whom have successfully completed their PhDs.

Work with the heritage sector

All of my scholarly work is in some way intended to benefit the sector and cultural policy makers, including the provision of recommendations for practice, training and building reflexive awareness of key issues (both past and present) for museums, galleries, heritage and society. I have co-produced exhibitions, such as the permanent display 'Northern Spirit' at the Laing Art Gallery, and have provided advice for museums, national governments and for the EU. I am an active contributor to international and European ICOM workshops. In 2017 I was a member of the Scientific Committee for the International Museum Day theme of 'Museums and Contested Histories'. I work closely with the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. In 2025 I was invited to participate in the advisory meeting of the Council of Europe's 'Cultural Routes' programme. In 2026 I will be reviewing the research strategies of the Royal Museums for Art and History in Belgium.

Keywords 

heritage; museums; memory; cultural and social theory and politics; affect and emotion; art curatorship; art theory; epistemology; display; art interpretation; museum history; social constructionism; ontologies; new materialism; disciplinarity; place; time; migration; EU; difficult history; uses of the past; cultural politics; identity; representation; communities; co-production, forests; arboreal humanities.

I teach across the Museum, Gallery and Heritage Studies programmes. I have also led modules in Visual Culture and History of Art.

• Articles

  • Daugbjerg M, Whitehead C. The Grounds of Gallipoli: earthy memories and the collapse of space and time. Memory Studies 2024, 17(2), 403-426.
  • Whitehead C, Coffield E. The multiple interfaces of engagement: towards a new conception of gallery learning. Museum and Society 2018, 16(2), 240-259.
  • Whitehead C, Eckersley S, Bozoglu G. Negotiating Instrumental and Realist perspectives in European Heritage Research. Economia della Cultura 2018, XXVIII(4), 551-566.
  • Schofield T, Foster-Smith D, Bozoglu G, Whitehead C. Co-Producing Collections: Re-imagining a Polyvocal Past with Cultural Probes. Open Library of Humanities 2018, 4(1), 35-35.
  • Whitehead C, Bozoğlu G. Protest, Bodies, and the Grounds of Memory: Taksim Square as 'heritage site' and the 2013 Gezi Protests. Heritage and Society 2016, 9(2), 111-136.
  • Whitehead C. Time and place, truth and proof. The 22 July Information Centre. Nordisk Museologi 2015, (2), 146-154.
  • Newman A, Goulding A, Whitehead C. Contemporary visual art and the construction of identity: maintenance and revision processes in older adults. International Journal of Heritage Studies 2014, 20(4), 432-453.
  • McCarthy C, Mason R, Whitehead C, Parby J, Cicalo A, Schorch P, Witz L, Gonzalez PA, Roux N, Ambos E, Rassool C. Museums in a Global World: A Conversation on Museums, Heritage, Nation, and Diversity in a Transnational Age. Museum Worlds: Advances in Research 2013, 1(1), 179–194.
  • Newman A, Goulding A, Whitehead C. How cultural capital, habitus and class influence the responses of older adults to the field of contemporary visual art. Poetics 2013, 41(5), 456-480.
  • Newman A, Goulding A, Whitehead C. The Consumption of Contemporary Visual Art: Identity Formation in Late Adulthood. Cultural Trends 2012, 21(1), 29-45.
  • Buckley B, Goulding A, Newman A, Pringle E, Whitehead C. Artists, Young people and Galleries, Artists' Insights. Engage Journal 2011, 27, 12-26.
  • Alberti S, Whitehead C, eds. Constructing Nature Behind the Glass. Museum & Society 2008, 6(2).
  • Whitehead C. Aesthetic Otherness, Authenticity and the Roads to Museological Appropriation: Henry Cole's Travel Writing and the Making of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Studies in Travel Writing 2006, 10(1), 1-26.
  • Whitehead C. Henry Cole's European travels and the building of the South Kensington Museum in the 1850s. Architectural History 2005, 48, 207-234.
  • Whitehead C. Book review: The Culture of Property: The Crisis of Liberalism in Modern Britain. Journal of Urban History 2005, 31(6).
  • Whitehead C. Book review: Culture and Class in english Public Museums 1850-1914. Museum and Society 2005, 3(3), 181-182.
  • Whitehead C. Architectures of Display at the National Gallery The Barry Rooms as art historiography and the problems of reconstructing historical gallery space. Journal of the History of Collections 2005, 17(2), 189-211.
  • Whitehead C. Live Interpretation and Art in Museum, Gallery and Heritage Studies. European Insights (International Museum Theatre Alliance Europe 2003, 5(1), 2-4.
  • Whitehead C. Archival Sources for the Study of the Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Italian Marble Trade. The Sculpture Journal 1999, 44-53.
  • M. Barnes and C. Whitehead. The “Suggestiveness” of Roman Architecture: Henry Cole and Pietro Dovizielli’s Photographic Survey of 1859. Architectural History 1998, 41.
  • C. Whitehead. Systems of Display and Object Communication in Italian Museums: the territory exhibited. Museological Review 1997, 4, pp. 29-40.

• Authored Books

  • Whitehead C. Analysing Museum Display: Theory and Method. London and New York: Routledge, 2024.
  • Whitehead C, Schofield T, Bozoglu G. Plural Heritages and Community Co-production: Designing, Walking and Remembering. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021.
  • Whitehead C, Eckersley S, Mason R. Placing Migration in European Museums: Theoretical, Contextual and Methodological Foundations. Milan: Politecnico di Milano DPA, 2012.
  • Whitehead C. Interpreting Art in Museums and Galleries. London: Routledge, 2012.
  • Whitehead C. Museums and the Construction of Disciplines: Art and Archaeology in Nineteenth-Century Britain. London: Duckworth, 2009.
  • Goulding A, Newman A, Whitehead C. Every Child Matters: Report on the London Museums Hub’s contribution to the Every Child Matters agenda. London: London Museums Hub, 2008.
  • Whitehead C. The Public Art Museum in Nineteenth Century Britain: The Development of the National Gallery. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.

• Book Chapters

  • Whitehead C, Lanz F. Museums and a Progressive Sense of Place. In: Golding V; Walklate J, ed. Museums and Communities: Diversity, Dialogue and Collaboration in an Age of Migrations. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2019, pp.20-41.
  • Lanz F, Whitehead C. Exhibiting voids: displaying migration and the role of the built environment. In: Dogramaci, B; Mersmann, B, ed. Handbook of Art and Global Migration: Theories, Practices, and Challenges. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2019, pp.331-348.
  • Bozoglu G, Whitehead C. Turkish Neo-Ottoman memory culture and the problems of copying the past. In: Brita Brenna, Hans Dam Christensen, Olav Hamran, ed. Museums as Cultures of Copies: The Crafting of Artefacts and Authenticity. Oxon: Routledge, 2018.
  • McCarthy C, Mason R, Whitehead C, Parby JI, Cicalo A, Schorch P, Witz L, Gonzalez PA, Roux N, Ambos E, Rassool C. Museums in a global world: A conversation on museums, heritage, nation and diversity in a transnational age. In: Watson, S.; Barnes, A.J.; Bunning, K, ed. A Museum Studies Approach to Heritage. London, UK: Taylor and Francis, 2018, pp.543-558.
  • Allen A, Bak J, Whitehead C, Gauthier D. Seeing Yourself in the Museum. In: Basso Perresut, L; Colombo, C; Postiglione, G, ed. Museum Multiplicities: Field Actions and Research by Design. Milan: Politecnico di Milano, 2015, pp.95-113.
  • Whitehead C, Mason R, Eckersley S, Lloyd K. Place, Identity and Migration and European Museums. In: Whitehead C; Lloyd K; Eckersley S; Mason R, ed. Museums, Migration and Identity in Europe. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015, pp.7-59.
  • Whitehead C, Bozoglu G. Constitutive Others and the Management of Difference: Museum Representations of Turkish Identities. In: Whitehead, C; Lloyd, K; Eckersley, S; Mason, R, ed. Museums, Migration and Identity in Europe. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015, pp.253-284.
  • Mason R, Whitehead C, Graham H. One Voice to Many Voices?: Displaying Polyvocality in an Art Gallery. In: Golding, V., Modest, W, ed. Museums and Communities: Curators, Collections and Collaboration. London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2013, pp.163-177.
  • Mason R, Whitehead C, Graham H. The Place of Art in the Public Art Gallery: A Visual Sense of Place. In: Davis, P., Corsane, G., Convery, I, ed. Making Sense of Place: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012, pp.133-144.
  • Whitehead C, Mason R. Museums, Peoples, Places: European museums and identity in history. In: Basso Peressut, L., Pozzi, C, ed. European Museums in an Age of Migrations. Questions, Challenges, Perspectives. Milan: DPA Press, 2012, pp.153-160.
  • Whitehead C. Institutional Autobiography and the Architecture of the Art Museum: Restoration and Remembering at the National Gallery in the 1980s. In: Hill, K, ed. Museums and Biographies: Stories, Objects, Identities. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012, pp.157-172.
  • Whitehead C. Towards Some Cartographic Understandings of Art Interpretation in Museums. In: Fritsch, J, ed. Museum Gallery Interpretation and Material Culture. London: Routledge, 2011.
  • Whitehead C. National Art Museum Practice as Political Cartography in Nineteenth-Century Britain. In: Knell, S., Aronsson, P., Amundsen, A.B., Barnes, A.J., Burch, S., Carter, J., Gosselin, V., Hughes, S.A., Kirwan, A, ed. National Museums: New Studies from around the World. London: Routledge, 2011, pp.105-122.
  • Whitehead C. Locating art: The display and construction of place identity in art galleries. In: Peralta E; Anico M, ed. Heritage and Identity: Engagement and Demission in the Contemporary World. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009, pp.29-46.
  • Newman A, Whitehead C. The impact of participation in gallery education activities on schoolchildren’s human, social and cultural capital. In: Evaluating the Impact of Arts and Cultural Education on Young People: A European and International Research Symposium. Paris: La Documentation Francais, Centre Pompidou, 2008, pp.421-429.
  • Goulding A, Newman A, Whitehead C. North East cluster research report. In: Taylor B; Houghton N, ed. Inspiring Learning in Galleries. London: Engage, 2008.
  • Goulding A, Newman A, Whitehead C. North East Cluster Phase 2.2 Research Report: artists working in gallery education contexts with children and young people. In: Taylor B, ed. Inspiring Learning in Galleries 02: Research Reports. London: Engage, 2008.
  • Goulding A, Newman A, Whitehead C. North East Cluster Phase 2.1 Research Report: artistic and pedagogical skill-sharing between teachers and artists. In: Taylor B, ed. Inspiring Learning in Galleries 02: Research Reports. London: Engage, 2008, pp.92-117.
  • Newman A, Whitehead C. Impact de la participation aux activités pédagogiques d’une galerie sur le capital humaine, social et culturel des élèves. In: Évaluer les effets de l’éducation artistique et culturelle. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou ; La Documentation française, 2008, pp.441-449.
  • Whitehead C. Establishing the manifesto: art histories in the nineteenth-century museum. In: Knell, SJ; Macleod, S; Watson, S, ed. Museum Revolutions: How museums change and are changed. London and New York: Routledge, 2007, pp.48-60.
  • Newman A, Whitehead C. North East Cluster Research Report. In: Taylor, B, ed. Inspiring Learning in Galleries. London: Engage, 2006, pp.122-155.
  • Whitehead C. Visiting with Suspicion: recent perspectives on art museums and galleries. In: G. Corsane, ed. Heritage, Museums and Galleries: an introductory reader. London: Routledge, 2004, pp.89-99.
  • Pratt L, Whitehead C. Notes on exhibitors. In: Making Buildings: Exhibition Catalogue. London: Crafts Council, 2001.
  • Whitehead C. Enjoyment for the Thousands: sculpture display at South Kensington 1851-1862. In: Yarrington, A., Sicca Bursill-Hall, C, ed. The Lustrous Trade: Material Culture and the History of Sculpture in England and Italy, c.1700-c.1860. London, UK: Leicester University Press, 2000, pp.222-239.
  • C. Whitehead. Gustav Friedrich Waagen’s Museographical System of 1853’, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore. In: Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, ed. Scritti in Onore del Kunsthistorisches Institut. 1996, pp.425-40.

• Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstracts)

  • Schofield T, Foster-Smith D, Bozoğlu G, Whitehead C. Design and Plural Heritages: Composing Critical Futures. In: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2019, Glasgow, UK: ACM.
  • Allen J, Paiva DS, Descure C, Whitehead C, Bak J. Walkthrough research: Methodological potentials for head-mounted cameras as reflexive tools in museum contexts. In: UbiComp 2014 - Adjunct Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing. 2014, Seattle, Washington: Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.

• Edited Books

  • Bozoglu G, Campbell G, Smith L, Whitehead C, ed. The Routledge International Handbook of Heritage and Politics. London and New York: Routledge, 2024.
  • Whitehead C, Eckersley S, Daugbjerg M, Bozoğlu G, ed. Dimensions of Heritage and Memory: Multiple Europes and the Politics of Crisis. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2020.
  • Whitehead C, Eckersley S, Lloyd K, Mason R, ed. Museums, Migration and Identity in Europe: Peoples, Places and Identities. London: Routledge, 2015.
  • Whitehead C, Mason R, Eckersley S, Lloyd K, ed. "Placing" Europe in the Museum: people(s), places, identities. Milan: Politecnico di Milano, 2013.

• Editorial

  • Whitehead C, Lanz F. Europe and Contentious Cultural Heritage. TRACES 2017, 2.

• Exhibition

  • Mason R, Whitehead C, Graham H. Northern Spirit: 300 Years of Art on Tyneside. 2010. Newcastle upon Tyne: Laing Art Gallery.

• Letter

  • Whitehead C. To Display is to Theorise. Architectural Research Quarterly 2005, 8(3-4), 202-203.

• Online Publications

  • Whitehead C. Radical Objects: Migration and Museums - a response. History Workshop, 2018. Available at: http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/radical-objects-migration-and-museums-a-response/.
  • Whitehead C. Critical heritages and serious play in museums: engaging with difficulty between Europe and the nation. European Commission, 2017. Available at: http://digitalcultures.ncl.ac.uk/cohere/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/WP1-essay-1.pdf.
  • Whitehead C. Why Analyse Museum Display?. 2016. Available at: http://digitalcultures.ncl.ac.uk/cohere/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/WP1-CAT-1.1.pdf.
  • Whitehead C. How to analyze museum display: script, text, narrative. Newcastle University, 2016. Available at: http://digitalcultures.ncl.ac.uk/cohere/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/WP1-CAT-1.2.pdf.

• Reports

  • Whitehead C, Mason R, Eckersley S, Lloyd K. Museums and Identity in History and Contemporaneity. Milan: Politenico di Milano, 2014.
  • Goulding A, Newman A, Whitehead C. Evaluation of the London Museums Hub Learning Programme, Unpublished research report to London Museums Hub. (48,200 words). 2008.
  • Buckley B, Goulding A, Newman A, Pringle E, Whitehead C. Artists’ Insights: A study of the practices, and the learning outcomes and impact, of visual artists working with young people and educators/facilitators in art gallery contexts, Unpublished report to Arts Council England, (61,800 words). 2007.
  • Newman A, Whitehead C. North East England Phase 2.0. Engage, 2006.
  • Newman A, Whitehead C. Fivearts Cities: an evaluative report on the impact on over 50s people of participation in activities related to British Art Show 6. Gateshead, UK: BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, 2006.
  • Newman A, Whitehead C. Five Arts Cities: An evaluative report on the impact on over 50s people of participation in activities related to the British Art Show 6. BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, 2006.

• Reviews

  • Whitehead C, Bozoglu G. Heritage and Memory in Europe: a review of key concepts and frameworks. CoHERE Critical Archive 2017, 1-23.
  • Whitehead C. The Thing about Museums: Objects and Experience, Representation and Contestation. Curator 2012, 55(4), 507-510.
  • Whitehead C. Grand Designs. Labor, Empire, and Museum in Victorian Culture. Journal of the History of Collections 2012, 24(1), 136-137.
  • Whitehead C. Ken Arnold. Cabinets for the Curious: Looking Back at Early English Museums. Journal of British Studies 2008, 47(2), 410-413.