Dr. Monica Eileen Patterson
Primary Investigator
An Associate Professor in the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies and Assistant Director of Curatorial Studies in the Institute for the Comparative Study of Literature, Art, and Culture at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She holds a PhD in Anthropology and History, and a certificate in Museum Studies from the University Michigan. Patterson is author of several articles and co-editor of two books: Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Anthrohistory: Unsettling Knowledge and Questioning Discipline(University of Michigan Press, 2011). She is currently completing a manuscript that examines the multiple and contested understandings of childhood in late-apartheid South Africa.
Her latest project, “A New, Critical Children’s Museology,” identifies and develops approaches to producing exhibit content not just for or about children, but by and with children across the globe. It explores how children can change curatorial practice and their communities via active participation and exhibit co-creation. As a curator, scholar, and activist, Patterson is particularly interested in the intersections of memory, childhood, and racism in postcolonial Africa and Canada, and the ways in which they are represented and engaged in contemporary public spheres.
Dr. Rebecca Friend (she/her)
Collaborator
Recently completed a PhD in Public History at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada), where she also holds an MA in Public History and a Graduate Diploma in Curatorial Studies. Her research focuses on representations of children and childhood across Canadian commemoration sites like monuments and museums, shedding light on the engagement of young people as collaborators at these sites. Rebecca is a trained museum professional who has worked as a researcher and consultant for national museums across Ottawa. She is currently the Director of Operations and Programs at the Landon Pearson Resource Centre for the Study of Childhood and Children’s Rights, and also serves as an Instructor within Carleton’s Childhood and Youth Studies program.
Dr. Naomi Hamer (she/her)
Collaborator
An associate Professor and Department Chair of English at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her scholarship examines the cross-media adaptation of children’s literature with a focus on picture books and digital cultures. She is the co-editor of More Words About Pictures: Current Research on Picture Books and Visual/Verbal Texts for Young People (eds. Hamer, Nodelman and Reimer, 2017) and The Routledge Companion of Fairy-tale Cultures and Media (eds. Greenhill, Rudy, Hamer, and Bosc, 2018). Dr. Hamer’s current research stems from her role as principal investigator on the SSHRC-funded project “Curating the Story Museum: Transmedia practices, participatory exhibits, and youth citizenship” with Dr. Ann Marie Murnaghan (York). This research examines how media is used to negotiate the cultural discourses of childhood, nationalism, gender, race, class, sexuality, and ability within children’s museum exhibits. Framed by ‘queering the museum’ and ‘the participatory museum’ movements, the next phase of this research will invite young people to engage as collaborative-curators.
Emily Jenkins-Moses
Research Assistant
Pursuing a PhD in Cultural Mediations and a diploma in Curatorial Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. She focuses on how discourses and narratives at heritage sites impact children’s feelings of belonging and inclusion through anthropological and child-centered methods. She earned her MA in Anthropology at California State University, Chico, focusing on the intersection between museums and heritage, culture, and childhood. Her master’s thesis, “Fostering Empathy: Storytelling, Community Representation, and Multivocality in Children’s Museums,” examined how children’s museums across the United States of America incorporate and articulate concepts of empathy in their exhibits.
Chun-Hui Wang 王惇蕙 (she/her)
Research Assistant
A museum practitioner and advocate for child-friendly museums based in Taiwan. She is currently on a mission to become an expert in PLAY.
Having worked in a variety of museums for many years, Hui has experienced firsthand how museums can become supportive and empowering environments for children. She is passionate about creating new forms of collaboration between museum professionals and children, a passion that led her to initiate the “Co-create with Children” project in Taiwan. The project aims to challenge adult-dominated museum practices by involving children as co-creators in the development of child-centered museum services.
More recently, her research has focused on how play can be used in different forms to bring museum practitioners and children together to explore children’s rights, inspired by the experiences and practices of children’s museums.
Chaoyang Zhang
Intern
Graduated from the School of Cultural Industries Management at the Communication University of China. He worked as a journalist covering international communication and cultural industries and is now interning at the UNESCO Regional Office for Eastern Africa. His interests focus on how individual experiences and everyday perspectives can contribute to artistic and curatorial practices.
His recent curatorial project is a queer-themed exhibition in Shenyang, China, co-curated through everyday objects contributed by 13 participants from mainland China. He is also researching place-making and children’s experiences in small and grassroots museums. Alongside his professional work, Chaoyang is a content creator on Bilibili, where he shares his cultural experiences with an audience of over 10,000 followers.