Hello everyone, my name is Tiffany and I am originally from Hong Kong. As part of my master’s in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, I have the incredible opportunity to spend 8 weeks as placement at two of the best medical museums: the George Marshall Medical Museum and the Infirmary Museum. I am now halfway through my placement, and I am excited to share some of my work and insights with you.
Like many Museum Studies students, my academic background is in history. My undergraduate degree was in China Studies, majoring in history. Since secondary school, I have been fascinated by history, so I choose “World history” and Chinese history as my electives (Similar to GCSE or A-Level), which led me to pursue history throughout my education. However, the curriculum in Hong Kong takes a broad and chronological approach, so my knowledge of medical history was limited. To be honest, before this placement, I had a bias that medical history would be dull and difficult to understand. While I found half of it correct after the four weeks I spent here, it is really complicated yet very interesting and fascinating once you dive deeper!
My work at the two museums share similar goals but different focuses. At the George Marshall Medical Museum, my primary role is to develop educational materials for school groups and families, particularly for students preparing for their GCSE exam. This has given me an extraordinary opportunity to better understand the British education system and its curriculum. It is a solid foundation that gives me the freedom to be creative and add engaging elements to make our workshops more interactive. My goal is to not only engage students with the museum collection but also with the learning process itself.
At the Infirmary Museum, I have had the honour of participating in the renewal of objects for the current exhibition. Through archival and collection research, I have discovered many precious and compelling objects that are waiting to be showcased and shine in the display cases. The research is ongoing, so please stay tuned! I also wrote two captions for the Powick display using archives and photos to highlight a more positive side of the asylum. We hope this will challenge common perceptions of asylum as simply “Cruel” and “Inhumane”.
There are four more weeks to go and I look forward to sharing more of my journey with you!