HERITAGE FUTURES

Professor Fiona McLean

Professor

T: +44 (0) 141 331 8027
E: Fiona.McLean@gcal.ac.uk

Fiona is Professor in Heritage Management, having joined Heritage Futures at its launch in 2003. Currently the Director of Heritage Futures, she is also Associate Director for Research. Previously a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Stirling, Fiona has taken a rather circuitous route to her present post, from a Politics Degree at the University of Edinburgh, trainee manager at Strathclyde Regional Council in Glasgow, PGDip in Recreation and Leisure Management at Moray House College in Edinburgh, and Research Associate at the University of Northumbria in Newcastle, with a world tour thrown in for good measure. Her PhD which she completed in 1992 was subsequently published in ‘Marketing the Museum’ (Routledge, 1997).

Fiona is the module leader for Heritage Issues, Heritage Management and Collections Management on the MSc in Cultural Heritage Studies. Fiona has also taught on Museums Studies courses at the University of Gothenburg and the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies at the University of Newcastle. She is currently supervising two PhD students, one on the interpretation of dark heritage sites focusing on civil war battlefield sites in Spain, and the other, with Ian Baxter, on UNESCO world heritage sites.

Fiona has been a keynote speaker and panel member at conferences in Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, and Slovenia as well as at Museums Association and Heritage Lottery Fund conferences in the UK. She has acted as guest editor for the journals ‘Museum and Society’ on Museums and National Identity and on two occasions for the ‘International Journal of Heritage Studies’ on Heritage and Social Inclusion (with Andrew Newman) and Heritage and Identity (forthcoming).

Research Interests

Research interests focus particularly on the social role of heritage and the negotiation and construction of identities through heritage. Fiona is currently working on a number of research projects on museums and national identity (with Rhiannon Mason); museums and the audience (with Andrew Newman and Gaynor Bagnall); the role of museums in an inclusive society (with Andrew Newman); issues of identity, place and policy in battlefield sites (with Mary-Cate Garden and Ian Baxter); and was appointed to evaluate the V&A Image and Identity project. She was also recently awarded an ESRC grant to organise a seminar series on ‘Access to Identity’ which will be hosted by Glasgow Caledonian University along with the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies at the University of Newcastle and the UHI Millennium Institute.

Previous grant awards have enabled Fiona to conduct investigations in to ‘The Contribution of Museums to the Inclusive Community: An exploratory study’, an ESRC award with Andrew Newman, University of Newcastle, supported by Glasgow Museums and Tyne and Wear Museums (Award No. R000223294); ‘Constructing National Identity at the Museum of Scotland’, a Leverhulme Trust award, supported by the National Museums of Scotland; and an ESRC Seminars Competition award on ‘Accessing Identity’, which included a seminar on ‘Heritage and Identity’.

From these studies the following publications have been produced:

Publications

Newman, A. and McLean, F. (forthcoming) ‘The impact of Museums upon identity’, International Journal of Heritage Studies

Newman, A., McLean, F. and Urquhart, G. (2005) ‘Museums and the active citizen: tackling the problems of social exclusion’, Citizenship Studies, 9 (1), 41-57.

Newman, A. and McLean, F. (2004) ‘Capital and the evaluation of the museum and gallery experience’,  International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7(4), 480-498.

Newman, A. and McLean, F. (2004) ‘Presumption, policy and practice: the use of museums and galleries as agents of social inclusion’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 10(2), 167-181.

McLean, F. and Cooke, S. (2003) ‘Constructing the Identity of a Nation: The tourist gaze at the Museum of Scotland’, Tourism, Culture and Communication, Vol. 4, 153-162.

McLean, F. and Cooke, S. (2003) ‘The National Museum of Scotland: A symbol for a new Scotland?’, Scottish Affairs, 45, Autumn, 111-127.

Cooke, S. and McLean, F. (2003) ‘Picturing the Nation: The Celtic periphery as discursive other in the archaeological displays of the Museum of Scotland’, Scottish Geographical Journal, 118(4), 283-298.

Cooke, S. and McLean, F. (2002), ‘Our Common Inheritance: Narratives of self and other in the Museum of Scotland’, in Harvey, D. et al., (eds.) Celtic Geographies: Landscape, Culture and Identity, pp. 109-122,  Routledge, London.

Newman, A. and McLean, F. (2002) ‘Architectures of Inclusion: Museums, galleries and inclusive communities, in Sandell, R. (ed.) Museums, Society, Inequality, pp. 56-68, Routledge, London.

Cooke, S. and McLean, F. (2002), ‘Our Common Inheritance: Narratives of self and other in the Museum of Scotland’, in Harvey, D. et al., (eds.) Celtic Geographies: Landscape, Culture and Identity, pp. 109-122,  Routledge, London.

Newman, A. and McLean, F. (2002) ‘Architectures of Inclusion: Museums, galleries and inclusive communities, in Sandell, R. (ed.) Museums, Society, Inequality, pp. 56-68, Routledge, London.

Updated: 06/10/2008 | Site editor | Legal