Suzanne MacLeod
Suzanne MacLeod (she/her) is Professor of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester and Co-Director of the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG). In RCMG Suzanne undertakes collaborative research with a range of museums, galleries and heritage sites on projects that advance thinking and practice around museums’ social roles and responsibilities, drive inclusive organisational transformation and generate new insights and resources for the wider museums and heritage sector. Suzanne has authored and edited a number of books and articles on the spatial and social architecture of museums and the processes through which museums, galleries and heritage sites are shaped (see for example, Museum Architecture: A New Biography, The Future of Museum and Gallery Design, Museum Making: Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions and Reshaping Museum Space: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions). Driven by a firm belief that the expertise needed to enable museums to reach their potential as a force for good in society is within our grasp but is challenged continually by the embedded history of museums, their colonial and paternalistic origins, the conventions and ‘rules’ of professional practice and the increasing economisation of all societal systems, her most recent book explored how museum and heritage making can be harnessed towards the nurturing of our sense of humanity, democracy and everyday life (Museums and Design for Creative Lives, 2021). The book returned to an inspiring, rule-breaking lineage of progressive museum design and explored this physical history as a route to understanding more about the strategies through which particular spatial and social relationships were encouraged and prioritised and the methods through which these cultural organisations sought to create landscapes full of potential. Since 2021, Suzanne has been working with Dr Mark O’Neill on Addressing the Attendance and Benefit Gap to ask what would need to change about museums in order for them to fulfil their societal roles as sites of civic belonging and social cohesion.