Dr Sam Aylett

Professional biography

I am a visiting fellow at The Open University in the Department of Arts and Humanities. I received my PhD in History from the Open University in 2020 with a thesis entitled 'The Museum of London 1976-2007: Reimagining Metropolitan Narratives in Postcolonial London'. I received my BA (Hons) in History and MA in Modern World History from Brunel University London from 2008-2015. My research looks at the place and value of empire in British culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Specifically, I am interested in the museum as a site for examining shifting representations of empire and public engagement with histories of empire. My research is interdisciplinary, and I work across the fields of imperial history, material culture studies, museum studies and critical heritage studies. More recently, I have become interested in the social power of architecture and the power that space and architecture assert over the museum visiting experience, especially how museum design affects the way the public understands histories of empire.

As a Visiting Fellow I have been helping to develop new teaching resources for the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at the Open University. I have recently concluded the first stage of one of several projects: Biographies of Notable Female African and Asian figures from the 19th and 20th Centuries. This resource was developed as a starting point for understanding social, cultural and political changes in Africa and Asia, with a particular emphasis on feminist politics, suffrage movements, independence movements and anti-colonial activism: Ferguson Centre, 'Biographies of Notable Female African and Asian figures from the 19th and 20th Centuries', http://www.open.ac.uk/arts/research/ferguson-centre/teaching (Sam Aylett & John Slight). I am also working on African Resistance to Imperialism as part of the re-launch of the pioneering module, 'Empire 1492 - 1975'.

September 2018 - September 2019 I was an assistant lecturer and module team assistant for the module, 'Empire 1492 - 1975'.

April 2017 - September 2019, I worked as a PhD Tutor for the Brilliant Club, a UK charity that exists to increase the number of pupils from under-represented backgrounds progressing to highly selective universities. I designed and taught my own module based on my own PhD research: Museums and Empire: Legacies of Slavery.

Books

Aylett., S, Legacies of an Imperial City: The Museum of London 1976-2007 (London: Routledge, 2022).

Guest Lectures

• 'Pride, Empire and Postcolonial Approaches at the Museum of London 1976-1993', New Museum Conversations, 24 October 2018, Museum of London, London Wall.

Open Access Articles

• Aylett., S. (2022) Networks of Influence: Peopling Collections at The Museum of London and Brooklyn Historical Society 1989-1994. Academia Letters, Article 4757. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4757. 

Conference Presentations

• Fear of the Past: Public perceptions of Decolonisation. Post-Colonial Heritage Research Group including Sam Aylett (Open University), Matthew Jones (University of Sussex), Adiva Lawrence (University of Hull), Laharee Mitra (Goldsmiths University of London), Michael Rayner (University of Sussex). http://www.museumethnographersgroup.org.uk/en/conference/441-2021-conference.html.
• 'Designing Imperial London at The Museum of London, 1976', Museum Exhibition Design: Histories and Futures, hosted by the Centre for Design History at the University of Brighton, 1-11 September 2020. http://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/centrefordesignhistory/2020/05/13/museum-exhibition-design-histories-and-futures/. 
• 'Cultural Restiution: Foregrounding African Voices', Empire and Decolonisation workshop, The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies and Postcolonial and Global Literatures Research Group, 9-10 July 2020.
• 'City Museums and Representations of Empire in 20th Century Britain', Research Seminar on the History of Colonialism, 28 January 2020, Institute of Contemporary History — NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities.
• 'Imperial London to London, Sugar & Slavery: Empire at the Museum of London and the Museum of London Docklands 1976-2007', Researching Empire Workshop, 12 July 2019, Open University.
• 'The Rise and Fall of the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum', Heritage, Diversity and the Legacies of Empire, 17 May 2013, Institute for Historical Institute http://www.ciera.fr/en/node/6051.

Writing

• 'The Tropenmuseum Amsterdam: An Honest Reflection of the Dutch Colonial' Past http://www.mainlymuseums.com/stories/tropenmuseum-amsterdam.html
• 'The Contentious Humboldt Forum - Museums and the Mediation of German Memory Culture', Mainly Museums, https://mainlymuseums.com/post/415/the-contentious-humboldt-forum-museums-and-the-mediation/.
• 'Patriot Nations at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian', Mainly Museums, https://mainlymuseums.com/post/520/patriot-nations-at-the-smithsonian-s-national-museum-of-the-american-indian/.

Co-convenor and founder of the Postcolonial Heritage Research Group

The Postcolonial Heritage Research Group is a postgraduate research network aimed at providing a common platform to share writings and ideas, propose events, while promoting complex and provocative research across a number of inter-related questions pertaining to representations of empire, colonialism, and slavery at museums and art galleries.The group was founded in 2019 by myself, Matthew Jones (Sussex) and Advia Lawrence (Hull). A summary of our inaugural symposium can be read here: https://phrg2019.home.blog/2019/10/31/summary-of-proceedings-empire-and-the-new-museum-paradigm/

Website/Blog: https://phrg2019.home.blog/2019/05/09/phrg2019/