Associate Members

Colin Sterling

© Colin Sterling

I am Assistant Professor of Memory and Museums at the University of Amsterdam. I teach across heritage and memory, museum studies and artistic research, and am a member of the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture.

My research focuses on critical-creative approaches to heritage, memory and museums. I am interested in how artists, designers, architects, writers and other creative practitioners engage with museums and heritage as spaces of critical enquiry. From 2020-21 I was project co-lead on Reimagining Museums for Climate Action, a design competition and research project that sought to inspire radical change in museums to address the climate crisis, culminating in an exhibition at COP26 in Glasgow.

I was previously an AHRC Research Fellow at UCL Institute of Archaeology. I was Principal Investigator on the New Trajectories in Curatorial Experience Design project, which asked how emerging approaches to immersive and experiential design might contribute to critical heritage thinking and practice. My time as a visiting fellow at CARMAH was undertaken as part of this project. I was also a Post-Doctoral Research Associate on the AHRC Heritage Priority Area project, and a Project Curator at the Royal Institute of British Architects. I have worked as a heritage consultant internationally, specialising in curatorial planning and interpretation.

I am the author of Heritage, Photography, and the Affective Past (Routledge, 2020) and the co-editor of Deterritorializing the Future: Heritage in, of and after the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2020). I am co-editor of the journal Museums & Social Issues.