New book on participatory practice in museums by Dr Helen Graham published

Deconsituting Museums: Participation’s Affective Work by Dr Helen Graham is out this month.

Published by UCL Press, Deconsituting Museums: Participation’s Affective Work explores why participation – the direct involvement of non-museum staff in museums – has been so hard. 

Over the past 30 years, museums have hoped that participatory projects would better serve their claims to be accessible, inclusive, representative and diverse. And yet, adding participation to museums has tended to generated conflict, disappointment and anger.

Dr Helen Graham is an Associate Professor in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies. Since joining the University of Leeds in 2011, Helen has led and been involved in a series of action research projects exploring the relationship between museums, heritage and participation.

In this new book, Helen argues that the difficulties produced by adding participatory practice to museums arise from political incompatibility.

Cover for Helen Graham's new book, Deconstituting Museums: Participation's affective work, published by UCL Press (September 2025). Cover artwork by Clifford Hayes.

In the representational liberal logics that underpin museum decision-making, trustees and professionals make decisions ‘on behalf of’ future generations and the public. This is a political infrastructure the book names ‘museum constitution’.

Conversely, participation arises from ideas and practices from direct and horizontal political traditions, drawing those who act as facilitators into new relationships and expanding political imaginations.

Through sustained engagement with theories of affect, materialism and feminist and decolonial praxis, Helen identifies techniques for deconstituting museums.

Using experimental writing as a method to turn away from the desire to right institutional wrongs and towards relational and directly negotiated ways of organising, Helen locates participation not as engagement but as a mode of governance that is enabled by, and enables, variant political ontologies.

This is an alternative Helen names ‘participatory worlding’.

Giving form to the political quandaries of institutionally-located participation ... will shape my next set of participatory and action research projects.

Helen Graham said:

“Writing Deconstituting Museums enabled me to articulate the ways in which ‘museum constitution’ is a political formation in which I had become trained and had trained myself, a kind of habit or reflex.

“The process of writing the book became an act of retraining my own reflexes in order to be able to be more responsive to the new possibilities for being together and organising ourselves that arise during the doing of participation.

“Giving form to the political quandaries of institutionally-located participation – and retaining my reflexes – has significantly shifted my approaches to facilitation and will shape my next set of participatory and action research projects.”

Helen’s research for Deconstituting Museums was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The book was also enabled by a period of study leave co-funded by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures and the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies.

Deconstituting Museums: Participation’s Affective Work by Helen Graham is available open access for the UCL Press website.

More information

Helen Graham will be in-conversation with Bernadette Lynch at an online event on Thursday 16 October, 2-3.30pm.

Museums and participation: What is it, exactly, that we’ve been doing? will explore the current state of museums and participation, seeking to get to the underlying political formations and paradoxes at work in adding participation to museums.

Find out more about the in-conversation event and book your place.

Feature image

Helen Graham. Image © University of Leeds.