As cultural institutions aiming to serve the public through their collections, museums and galleries are now facing questions regarding what they should collect, how collections should be interpreted and whose voices are being represented. Ultimately, museums need to justify their place within our modern society where communities and individuals have multi-layered cultural heritages, faith traditions, identities, interests and needs.

This conference aims to reconsider our understanding of material culture, identity and inclusion issues. It, also, aims to explore how what we choose to collect, display and interpret in museums and galleries validates certain audiences' identities whilst excluding others.
The conference will bring together PhD students from different University departments to:

be inspired by and learn from leading academics who are researching in the fields of material culture, social inclusion and cultural identities;

share ideas and cutting-edge theoretical critical thinking;

share research methodologies and the experiences of field work; and

give PhD students a chance to develop their presentation skills and forum for disseminating their research