The international project ‘CHAPTER’ has been investigating since 2020 how right-wing populist forces are influencing museums in Poland, the UK and Germany.
When the political scientist Julia Leser and her team surveyed museum and cultural institution employees in 2021 and 2022, she was amazed at how much their work is at the centre of right-wing populism. And not just in Poland, where the right-wing PiS party was in power, but also in the UK and Germany. In the research project CHAPTER – ‘Challenging Populist Truth-Making in Europe: The Role of Museums in a Digital ‘Post-Truth’ European Society’ – she interviewed around 40 employees of large and small institutions in urban and rural areas, including history, art and open-air museums, memorials and exhibitions on migration.
Together with Julia Leser, other researchers from Germany, Great Britain and Poland under the direction of Sharon Macdonald, Professor of Social Anthropology and founder of the ‘Centre for anthropological research on museums and heritage’, and Christoph Bareither, Professor at the University of Tübingen, systematically investigated this phenomenon. They wanted to find out how and in which institutions right-wing populism intervenes and how the employees are affected by it at work and personally. Since 2020, the researchers have been compiling examples and data to document and analyse the actions of right-wing populists and their effects. The project has also resulted in an app that invites users to engage with the topic of populism using specific objects in selected museums.
Read a detailed article about the research project.
Learn more about the CHAPTER app in the video.
Caption: Since 2020, the ‘CHAPTER’ project has been investigating how right-wing populist forces influence museums in Poland, the UK and Germany. Photo: Challenging Populist Truth-Making in Europe (CHAPTER)