Dr Helena Bonett

About

I am a post-doctoral researcher on the MaHoMe project and teach in the School of Creative and Cultural Industries at Kingston University. My research utilises ethnographic and participatory methodologies as a means of unlocking cultural meaning with a particular focus on creative and museological spaces – including artists' studios and homes that have been curated into museums – and objects – including personal objects, tools and miscellanea that tell different stories of artists' lives and experiences.

My teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels has focused broadly on areas around art and design, visual culture and museum studies, critical theory and philosophy, and research methods and curatorial approaches. I also have wide-ranging experience of educating a diversity of publics within museum and gallery settings through talks, workshops and publications.

My current research aims to utilise participatory curatorial methods to shift traditional museological heritage framings of artists' legacies to include those whose legacies and knowledges have traditionally been marginalised, owing principally to the intersections of race, gender and class. 

I have published broadly across the arts and humanities, with particular focus on twentieth-century sculpture and museums, including directing a film, Trewyn Studio (2015), for the Tate St Ives Artists Programme on the former studio-home of the sculptor Barbara Hepworth in St Ives, Cornwall, and editing the online research publication The Squatter Years: Recovering Dorich House Museum's Recent Past (2019–21) and co-authoring a new museum guidebook and interpretation materials for Dorich House Museum, the former studio-home of the sculptor Dora Gordine.