Booking is now open for our History Futures Forum: Exploring Careers in Museums and Heritage.
We are thrilled to have a global leader in the Museums & Heritage sector as our opening speaker. Charles Saumarez Smith had a successful career at the V&A before going on to lead the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery and the Royal Academy of Arts.
31st October 1.30 – 3.30pm, Grad Centre, 6th floor, room 601
We have asked Sir Charles to speak about the inspiration for his early career, the different types of roles that exist within the sector, his insights into what it takes to succeed, his perspective as someone who has been overseeing recruitment for many years as to what he looks for in a potential employee and the rewards and challenges of pursuing such a career.
Sir Charles Saumarez Smith CBE is Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy and a British art historian. In 1982, he joined the staff of the Victoria and Albert Museum as an Assistant Keeper and subsequently in 1990, he was appointed Head of Research at the V&A. In 1994, he was appointed Director of the National Portrait Gallery and, in 2002, Director of the National Gallery. In 2007, Sir Charles was appointed Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts. He is a Professor of Cultural History at Queen Mary, University of London and in 2018 Charles was knighted for his service to the arts.
We will also be joined by QM History graduates working in the sector, who will talk in detail about what their jobs involve, share their insights from their career experiences to date and their top tips for anyone wanting to follow in their footsteps.
Emily Charles - Curator of the American Air Museum at Imperial War Museum, Duxford
Emily graduated in 2012 and is the youngest member of IWM’s curatorial team. Her work for IWM has taken her from the factories of Michigan to the airfields of East Anglia. She is currently responsible for looking after the biggest collection of American Military aircraft outside of the US, but was also a core part of the team who redeveloped the American Air Museum in 2016 and built IWM’s americanairmuseum.com website. Throughout her career she also has helped to digitise intercepted messages at Bletchley Park, catalogue Official photos taken by the Ministry of Defence of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, launch the National Army Museum’s website nam.ac.uk, and move a surprisingly large number of chairs!
Annie Andoh – Social Media Manager, Victoria & Albert Museum
Annie graduated in 2012 and worked in an array of marketing and advertising agencies in London running social media campaigns for the likes of Rolls-Royce, Sony Music, IBM, British Heart Foundation and Pernod Ricard. She has now found a home as the Social Media Manager for the V&A, shaping their social media strategy and propelling the museum to connecting with audiences in new ways.
Other guests joining us are:
Current QM student Anna Maria Grill will also share her experiences last summer of interning at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich and now digitising records for the National Archives… we will explore how she secured these opportunities and what she has/is learning from them.
Dr Ed Legon, Lecturer in Heritage Management will introduce the new QMUL Masters in Heritage Management, which is run in partnership with Historic Royal Palaces.
Reserve your place here: https://bit.ly/2CRUziD & login with your usual QMplus login details. N.B. If this is the first time you have booked a careers event, there will be a few initial questions to get through to the event booking.
***The event will finish at 3.30pm. We anticipate demand for places to be very high, when signing up, please consider whether you can arrive on time & stay for the duration of the event.***
