The words we use matter. Whether it’s providing an accessible entry point on a wall label, framing a fuller history of a collection’s colonial legacy, or ensuring that database entries don’t reproduce stereotypes or prejudice, it all begins with words.
Embedded in contemporary case studies and ongoing challenges from within Oxford’s museums, this course explores why language matters, and how our language practices can actively create more inclusive, welcoming, and resilient institutions.
We will examine the worldviews and values that language reflects, shapes, and naturalises in the context of (Western) museums, and how these, in turn, can create experiences of belonging and inclusion, alienation or harm. We’ll learn together through a combination of short lectures and presentations, museum visits, and practical small-group activities, developing strategies and best practices that will equip you to assess and – where necessary – redress, the language at work in your institution’s databases, labels, website content, staff training and more.
While no previous museum experience is required, this course is designed with museum professionals in mind.