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Manifesto for Collections-Based Research and Teaching

Most of this manifesto refers to the PhD level, but elements of this training are applicable to BA and MA contexts as well. My point is that research activity is the most vital constituent of any successful university learning environment, and research environments are not unique to the university. It is a pedagogical position, not an institutional location, and since collecting institutions are crucial to the production of knowledge in many fields, we can find such learning spaces in most collecting institutions as well. 
 


Introduction and Assertions
Manifestos are polemical and directive, concerning practices and systems that cry out for radical change.
They derive from consensus garnered widely and over relatively long periods of time, and require in the first instance a definition of their underlying foundations and assumptions.
1) In thinking about academic learning spaces, we need an inclusive definition of "museum": the term already encompasses a huge range of materials, from natural history to ethnography, industrial and technological instruments, decorative arts, fine art, theatre history, maritime and naval history and so much more. 1 A valuable definition would extend to collections such as archives, libraries and cinematheques containing materials such as photography, cartography, films and architectural drawings: such materials are linked historically to those held in museums, but have been divided from them institutionally. Researching and learning in museum contexts also means seeking correlative contextual evidence in sister institutions, driven by research questions not limited by these divisions. From this point on, instead of saying "museum" I will use "collection" and "collecting institution" to convey the breadth of this definition.
2) An "academic learning space" is primarily one

Learning Research Methods in Collections Contexts
How is an academic learning space currently operationalised across such different infrastructures as the museum and the university? What collaborations, infrastructures and -implicitly -culture change, are required?
Going beyond research that is simply about museums and collecting institutions means doing truly collaborative research with them and in them -research that integrates their specific practice-based methodologies.
Collections-based research with humanities methods can be loosely characterised as research that takes place in contexts where primary source materials are held in structured frameworks. This can be in museums, but also in archives, personal papers, corporate records and other contexts. Such collections can contain artworks, letters, material culture and instruments, and thus are significant for all kinds of research in all manner of knowledge practices and disciplinary contexts in the wider humanities, social sciences and arts. Learning methods appropriate for research in these contexts is not at all the same thing as learning how to be a museum professional or effecting institutional critique from a safe distance. Collections-based research training is not simply "museum studies lite": it enables scholars to engage most fully and deeply with collection contexts and their contents, where objects, histories and methods come critically alive to each other. 3 Far beyond the "close looking" that is enabled when art history classes transfer from classroom to public gallery, collections-based research takes university research students at any level directly into the engine room of a museum: they need training to see and hear above the roar and blast of the furnace of meaning they will encounter there.
What is expected by universities and their students in the (literal and figurative) academic learning space of collecting institutions such as museums goes something like this: • Students will have exceptional access to collections and to information held about those collections.
• Students will be able to converse with any and every staff member affiliated with the collecting institution, calling on their knowledge to support the student's work.
• Collection staff will as a matter of course teach students how to use the collecting institution's resources and instruments: databases, conservation labs, project management tools, technical services, library, and more.
All of this access comes at a cost that is far too rarely covered in terms of staff time and resources. On the occasions when all of the above happens as it should, these collaborative, cross-institutional studentships (often PhDs) are among the most rewarding, sociable, synergetic, research-rich, interdisciplinary, dynamic, groundbreaking, intensive, upskilling and productive doctoral studentships to be held anywhere in the world. From my own experience of designing such studentships and training such students in the UK, Germany and the United States, those who survive the complexity of such projects come out tempered and galvanised, able to work across differing contexts and to design and deploy synthesised methodologies from widely divergent disciplines. Surely we need them and their skills; surely we need to pay more attention to the health of the wider collaboration that supports this learning space, and to what museums need in order to sustain it.

Landscapes of Collections-Based Learning Spaces
In their article for Nordisk Museologi covering recent Danish university research on and in museum interpretation projects, Knudsen and Simonsen state "it is beyond the scope of this article to further describe the relationships between cultural policy, funding strategies and the shaping of research collaborations between museums and universities." (Vestergaard Knudsen and Ekelund Simonsen 2017, 88-104). This is the landscape that I will now begin to chart. The academic learning space of collecting institutions is understood, supported and enacted very differently at different institutional scales.
At the micro-scale, individual students and collecting institution staff come into direct (and, ideally, wellprepared) contact with collections in the framework of student-led research questions. A fundamental knowledge-generating excitement is mutually produced; one that can be favourably compared to the best experimental inquiry in any field. A number of students now working professionally as researchers in both collecting arenas and university contexts have told me unhesitatingly that the periods they spent inside collecting institutions as students or placements were the most practically and intellectually enriching experiences of their entire tertiary education. This is the scale at which pedagogical innovation is most significant -the scale of one-to-one teaching where collection professionals transmit their embodied knowledge of the ways in which their areas of expertise in material culture imbricate with the panoply of practices deployed in collecting institutions. 4 It is often a multi-layered and self-reflexive experience conjoining practice and theory, intrinsically extruding thick descriptions and addressing significant epistemes of knowledge production (Geertz 1973, 3-30).
At institutional scale, the departmental divisions that already internally sunder both collecting institutions and universities into pie-shaped pieces are very problematic for the effective functioning of these bodies. This is multiplied when these constraints apply across partnerships between universities and collecting institutions, as problems begin to ricochet across the two institutions. Many joint projects and partnerships in research and in teaching are hampered by pre-existent processual dysfunctions within the two types of institutions, by misunderstandings concerning each other's purpose and practice, and by being truncated to singular department-to-department agreements that do not embrace the full interdisciplinary potential of the wider inter-institutional exchange.
The very different currencies and economies of these two sorts of knowledge institutions are often submerged and ignored in these partnerships, dooming them to partial success and wasted resources, and making all the more miraculous those projects which do succeed. Collecting institutions are often cast at best in a supportive, subjugated role as "infrastructure" for research -research that is assumed to be best conducted by those who are univer- This landscape is the context for our "museum as academic learning space" and there is cause for concern.
These unequal pulls make partnerships unnecessarily difficult and asymmetrical, and they deeply influence the funding, design, operationalisation and experience of collections as academic learning spaces for both students and more seasoned researchers. Improvements can most productively be made at the policy, evaluation and funding scale, as they will better the conditions for all other scales of research, teaching and learning.

Recommendations
What follows is a draft manifesto for an ideal teaching, learning and research arena yet to be built between universities and collecting institutions -one that is not only desirable but also possible. There are a number of proto-models for this, some of them longstanding, such as the UK Collaborative Doctoral Award studentships. 6 In Germany, another model is the iterative development

Built Infrastructures and Processes
Objects do not move themselves, and it is rarely appro- The author would like to thank colleagues internationally for their collaboration over many years in this field, and Danish colleagues in universities, museums, libraries and other institutions who shared their experiences with her confidentially.

1
It is critically important to remember that knowledge practices in many of these varied disciplines all demonstrably originate in historical collecting practices, including attendant collections information and comparative relational analysis. These collections still exist in the form of ethnography, natural history, art and archaeology museums, however much the intellectual disciplines that they spawned may have floated free of their beginnings.

2
The OECD Frascati Manual definition of research indicates that collecting-institution practice sits well within its outline: "Research and experimental development (R&D) comprise creative and systematic work undertaken in order to increase the stock of knowledge -including knowledge of humankind, culture and society -and to devise new applications of available knowledge." See "OECD Frascati Manual 2015". 3 In Denmark, the largest cohorts of doctoral students to be given some form of collections access recently has, however, been squarely in a museum studies context focused mainly on interpretation (formidling), experience economy, digitisation and social media. Professor Kirsten Drotner (Syddansk Universitet) has led several consecutive doctoral studentship block grant partnerships of this kind across a range of universities and museums. See " DREAM, 2009-2015" and "Vores Museum, 2016 In the UK, the Arts and Humanities Research Councilfunded Collaborative Doctoral Award has continued to be a significant pathway through postgraduate humanities study in the UK. In nearly 15 years, around 1,000 studentships have been awarded. Co-supervised one-to-one by archive, museum and library professionals, they also involve training both at the individual collecting institution and through a non-university consortium. See "Collaborative Doctoral Training Partnership Consortium, n.d.".

5
Practice-based doctorates in the creative arts suffer some of the same problems. In Denmark, doctoral students at the Royal Danish Art Academy are still required to register with a University and to complete a written dissertation on top of their creative productions. 11 EU-funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) include Innovative Training Networks with doctoral studentships. ITNs support competitively selected joint research training and/or doctoral programmes implemented by European partnerships of universities, research institutions and so-called "non-academic organisations". "The research training programmes provide experience outside academia, hence developing innovation and employability skills. ITNs include industrial doctorates, in which non-academic organisations have an equal role to universities in respect of the researcher's time and supervision, and joint doctoral degrees delivered by several universities." See "Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions 2019".
12 See "Slots-og Kulturstyrelsen 2016". These guidelines are intended to be read in relation to the Danish Museum Act. (Museumsloven, jf. lovbekendtgørelse nr. 1505 af 14. december 2006 om museer mv.,) but are not themselves binding. Note: "The vast majority of the requirements in the Act are formulated to allow for unambiguous assessment of their fulfilment. However, some requirements in the Danish Museum Act are formulated such that assessment of their fulfilment requires a clarification or definition of a level at which the task is performed (e.g. the provision that "the museum must have a reasonable academic standard"). This clarification is provided by the recommendations of the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces, which in such cases are a reflection of the desired level." (p. 4). This interpretative "flexibility" can work both for and against collecting institutions.