 I got to this research over quite a long time I think, the trajectory, when I was in high school actually I had this wonderful history teacher Mr Powell who was this kind of left wing social historian really interested in people's histories from the bottom up, he used to actually jump on the tables and start shouting a government for the people by the people he got really animated and I think that really inspired me to do history but also people's history telling history from the bottom up from the people and then later on during my masters, my undergraduate when I started to think more about museums and the stories they tell, that all kind of coalesced to bring me where I am now thinking about museums and empire, post-colonialism and power. So broadly speaking my research is about museums as a site for examining the impact of empire and decolonisation on culture and museums in the 20th and 21st century and specifically I'm looking at the Museum of London. London is a very diverse, messy urban environment and it needs to be inclusive and to represent that in a very authentic way and it hasn't always done that and in the 1990s it begins to change and it starts to think about how to make more multicultural inclusive histories and to represent that urban diversity better. It's contemporary history so I'm really looking at the past 20, 30 years and methodologically there isn't a great deal of archival material or at least it's accessible so a lot of my research is focused on interviews with former curators and staff members at the museum and people who have worked on some of these exhibitions and projects so a big part of my research has been collecting those interviews. So what I've got here is the catalogue from the exhibition that I'm looking at for my PhD and really what this shows is this is the first time that the Museum of London really engages with multiculturalism and immigration and its importance to London and it ends up dealing with some more difficult topics it hasn't dealt with before like slavery so we can see here there's a picture of a slave in the service of James Drummond and the Duke of Perth so this is really the first time they start to engage with things like this. The reason I think this research is important to other people specifically the way that I'm conducting this research so looking at a museum and how they've tried to be more inclusive over time is it provides case studies and a roadmap for thinking through how museums can do that, where they're falling short, the lessons we can learn and thinking into the future how better we can serve diverse communities and representing them and making sure that they're included or feel included in culture. Research is obviously a very privileged thing to do you know you really get to spend time thinking through things that you really love and are important to you and hopefully important to other people so it is you know I feel very privileged to do it but of course like many things in life there are frustrations and pitfalls especially with a long project. I think with the project over three years four years or if you part time there's always a period in which you tend to kind of slump and hit the trough rather than the peak and it really helps to be quite resilient but we've got a great support network here at the OU you've got great colleagues and I think that helps to vent some of those frustrations and there's a real cohort and collegiality. It's allowed me to really pursue something I'm passionate about and develop my ideas and my thinking and actually develop confidence. I think that's the one thing that perhaps people don't think about or overlook with a PhD journey. You learn a lot of hard and soft skills and you improve as a researcher but it's the confidence that it gives you to feel like you have something to say and to join in with conversations and to have a point of view. I think working within museums and helping to think through ways in which we can make them more inclusive and make them represent the messy urban environment a little bit more authentically and honestly that would be what I'd like to do how I'm not so sure yet but you know I'm excited to find out.