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Staff Profile

Dr Katie Markham

Lecturer

  • Email: katie.markham@ncl.ac.uk
  • Address: Room 3.10
    Armstrong Building
    Queen Victoria Road
    Newcastle University,
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

Background


I joined the MCH team in 2016 as a part-time lecturing associate and was appointed as a full time Lecturer in 2020. Over this time I have taught on a wide range of undergraduate, and postgraduate modules in our department. I am module leader for two modules on the BA Media, Communication and Cultural Studies programmes; "Race, Culture and Identity" and "Visual Culture". 


My research sits at the intersection of critical heritage, museum, and tourist studies. I am particularly interested in exploring the crossover between community museums and tourism in countries that are emerging from conflict. A monograph, dedicated to exploring these themes, will be published with Routledge in 2023. Alongside Dr Emma Coffield, I have also spent the last three years working on the project "Beyond Employability", which explores the perceptions and experiences of students looking to enter the creative and cultural industries. I draw strongly on critical race, intersectional and decolonial perspectives within my research, and am invested in questions of how to build an anti-racist University. 


I am the DPD for our Museums, Galleries and Heritage Programmes and Co-Director for EDI in SACS. I am also one of four Co-Directors for the Centre for Heritage. 


Qualifications

PhD. "The person inside it has to be part of it'": Empathy, Post-Conflict Heritage and Troubles Tourism in Northern Ireland" (University of Leeds) - 2017

MA Contemporary Literature and Culture (University of York) - 2013

BA English and Related Literature (University of York) - 2011 

Memberships

Fellow of Advance HE (formally the Higher Education Academy)

Research

Research Interests. 

My research lies at the intersection of heritage and tourism studies, where I have particular interests in the fields of 'difficult' heritage, community museology and the study of empathy. 

My PhD thesis "The person inside it has to be part of it'": Empathy, Post-Conflict Heritage and Troubles Tourism in Northern Ireland" subjected the study of empathy to the critical lenses of feminist, critical race and decolonial theory, considering the manifestation of these issues in relation to Belfast's troubles tourism industry. Within this, I particularly focused on representations of the past as found in paramilitary museums, and the phenomena of black cab mural tourism. I am currently in the process of developing this thesis for monograph publication, and will be seeking to extend this research in the future in relation to other, post-conflict community heritage sites. 

Prior to this I was engaged in a short research project that explore visitor interpretations of the photographic displays at Cape Town's District Six Museum. The results of this project were published in 2017 in the International Journal of Heritage Studies, as part of a special issue, edited by Dr Joanne Sayner and Dr Jenny Kidd. 

Current Projects. 

Co-PI (with Dr Emma Coffield) Beyond Employability: Enabling Professional Cultural Identities (April 2018-July 2019, £9506.26, SACS funded) 

'Employability' is a term increasingly used in Higher Education - but what does it mean and what does it require of us within the university? This project aims to critically explore employability discourses in the cultural and creative sectors, and more specifically, to investigate the development of professional cultural identities by UG and PG students as enabled or prevented by teaching across a variety of programmes of study and standalone initiatives over the course of a full academic year. The project recognises that the way students identify themselves is a crucial factor in their securing work, but also in their becoming critically aware 'selves' and citizens. Yet traditional employability approaches in the cultural and creative industries (as elsewhere) tend to focus on the former at the expense of the latter, expecting students to self-manage portfolio or freelance careers in response to changes in the world of work and to demonstrate pre-defined sets of skills and aptitudes not available to all (e.g. on account of  structural or other barriers such as race, class, gender, health etc). The project therefore aims to a) identify and critically explore the development of professional identities by students as enabled or prevented by UG/PG teaching and standalone initiatives throughout the School of Arts and Cultures, and b) to use findings to develop an approach that moves beyond traditional approaches to employability, enabling and supporting students and graduates through an enhanced teaching offer so that they can find meaningful work and act as ethical citizens.

Beyond Employability is a collaborative project involving staff and students from SACS (MCH, Fine Art/NICAP and ICMuS), as well as the Newcastle University Business School and the Careers Service. 
Teaching

Undergraduate. 

At present I teach on a wide variety of modules as part of the Media, Communications and Cultural Studies degree programme, however I am currently the module leader for the following: 

MCH2065: Race, Identity and Culture

MCH2077: Visual Culture 


Postgraduate. 

I am the DPD for our Museums, Galleries and Heritage Programmes and supervise dissertations in these areas. 

Publications