Deconstituting Museums: Participation's affective work – book talk

In this talk, Dr Helen Graham will share insights from her new book, which explores why participation – the direct involvement of non-museum staff in museums – has been so hard.

Over the past 30 years, museums have turned to participation in the hope that direct involvement of non-museum staff would serve their claims to be accessible, inclusive, representative and diverse. And yet, adding participation to museums has often generated conflict, disappointment and anger.

Deconstituting Museums – published in September 2025 – argues that the difficulties produced by adding participatory practice arise from political incompatibility. 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.

In this book talk, Dr Helen Graham will give an overview of the key arguments developed in Deconstituting Museums, indicating how she drew on decolonial, feminist and materialist theorising to identifying techniques for deconstituting museums. Helen will also speak about and how she used experimental writing as a method to turn away from the desire to right institutional wrongs and towards relational and directly negotiated ways of organising.

The concluding arguments of the book locate participation not as engagement but as a mode of governance that is enabled by, and enables, variant political ontologies – an alternative named ‘participatory worlding’.

The affective work of facilitating participation has long tugged at and frayed museums’ constitutional liberal logics. Deconstituting Museums envisages how participation and its affects might be activated in reworking the politics of heritage.

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

About the speaker

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.

More information

This seminar is organised by the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds. It is free to attend and all are welcome.

If you are interested in joining us, we would be grateful if you would register via this sign-up form so we can keep track of numbers.

For more information, please email Helen Graham at H.Graham@leeds.ac.uk.

Feature image

Helen Graham. Image © University of Leeds.