Curating Climate Change: Collecting, Interpreting and Exhibiting the Changing Planet in UK Science Museums

Fox, Dorothea Ellen (2025) Curating Climate Change: Collecting, Interpreting and Exhibiting the Changing Planet in UK Science Museums. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

Climate change has profound implications on museum curators’ approaches to temporality: how they draw meaning from the past, how they situate the present, and how they contemplate the future. In this thesis, I explore these implications through the testimonies of curators who engage with the changing planet. By foregrounding activities in collecting and developing permanent galleries and temporary exhibitions—assessing the nuances between these practices—I examine how climate change impacts curators’ interpretation of the past, present and future. I draw particular attention to curators’ application of anticipatory and speculative futures thinking within their work.

For greater specificity, I study products and processes of science curatorship, taking an expansive view to assess current trends and speculate future directions. I therefore seek to fill a gap in curatorial literature, which is largely skewed towards the theory and practice of curating art. Primarily, I investigate the curatorial practices of the Science Museum (London), but central to my analysis is to cross-examine them with practices taking place across Thinktank (Birmingham), Glasgow Science Centre (in the Museums for Climate Action project), National Museums Scotland and the Sainsbury Centre.

I position the experiences and perspectives of museum practitioners—their thoughts, actions and decisions—at the heart of my research. Therefore, my methodology centres around oral history-style interviews with both curators and individuals whose work intersects with curating. This echoes one of my principal findings: that curating is relational, taking place through multiple, interacting agencies. Inspired by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, I examine curatorship in relation to curators’ spheres of influence: their microsphere, mesosphere, exosphere, macrosphere and chronosphere. I argue that ecological systems thinking provides a tool for marking out new directions and effecting change across individual and institutional practices. To conclude, I propose a new paradigm for science curatorship: curating for sustainable and equitable futures.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of History
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	10 Feb 2026 08:17
Last Modified:	10 Feb 2026 08:17
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/101866
DOI:

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