Serena Iervolino is a Critical Museologist with a PhD from the University of Leicester, where she explored postcolonial trajectories in European ethnographic museums. She joined King’s College London in 2017, following academic and research roles at the University of Leicester, Warwick, UCL Qatar (then an offshore department of UCL), Roma Tre University, and the Science Museum (AHRC-funded Postdoctoral Fellowship).

Her research examines how museums and galleries respond to postcolonial challenges through institutional change, collaborative practice, EDI strategies, decolonisation, and how they are shaped by public policy. She is currently writing a monograph on decolonisation in European ethnographic museums, based on longitudinal fieldwork. Serena also investigates how museums, galleries, and public art function as instruments of soft power and nation-building in the Arabian Peninsula, particularly Qatar.

A socially engaged scholar, she works closely with museums and activists to foster sectoral change and rethink curatorial practice. Her individual and collaborative research has been supported by major funders including the AHRC, Qatar National Research Fund, and the Research Foundation Flanders. She has served as PI and Co-I on projects funded by the AHRC, QNRF, and King’s, amongst others. Her work contributes to reimagining the civic and epistemic role of contemporary museums, bridging scholarship, public engagement and teaching into dialogue.

Research interests and PhD supervision

Serena is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work explores contemporary museum and gallery practice, with a focus on organisational, curatorial, and museological change. Her methodology combines interviews, institutional fieldwork, ethnography, archival research, and participatory, action-research, and arts-based methods.

She welcomes PhD supervision in areas including:

• Organisational change in museums and galleries.
• Decolonisation processes and postcolonial trajectories.
• Museums’ roles in promoting social inclusion, justice, and activism.
• EDI issues, especially the representation of minoritised identities and communities.
• Class differences, particularly working-class identities and experiences.
• Representation of LGBTQIA+ identities, with a focus on trans experiences.
• Participatory and collaborative methods in curatorial and knowledge-production processes.
• Curation, display, and interpretation of Global South material culture and art in Global North museums, and their reception.
• Museums, galleries, and public art in the Arabian Peninsula—particularly Qatar—as tools of soft power, nation-building, and social change.
• Museums’ entanglement with cultural, diversity, and educational policies.
• Museums’ position within the wider creative industries.
• Museums and AI-driven art curation.

Teaching

Serena teaches subjects closely aligned with her research interests and professional experience. Her teaching examines the roles of museums in contemporary society, with a focus on representation, minoritised communities and identities, curatorial and exhibition-making practices, participatory approaches, museum politics, audience development, community collaborations, and institutional engagement with social issues.

She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), committed to inclusive, research-led, and critically engaged pedagogy. Passionate about training ethical professionals and researchers, Serena fosters socially engaged and creative practice in the classroom. She facilitates active, collaborative learning and embeds professional practice into her teaching to prepare students for meaningful sectoral impact.

Expertise and public engagement

Serena Iervolino is a civically engaged scholar whose work prioritises public engagement, impact, and the wider dissemination of research. She is Impact and Engagement Co-Lead in CMCI (since 2023), supporting colleagues in enhancing the public relevance of their research and contributing to REF 2029 impact case study development.

Her collaborative projects have produced a range of widely accessible outputs including exhibitions, films, public debates, and professional reports, developed in partnership with museum professionals, activists, scholars, and minoritised communities. Notable examples include:

• ‘Research in Translation’ (AHRC-funded), which explored public engagement through exhibition display - see here.

• ‘Inequality, Class and the Pandemic’, which resulted in the acquisition of nine oral histories and the widely circulated open-source report ‘Museums, Class and the Pandemic’.

• ‘Addressing the Elephant in the Room: Museums and Class Differences’ (2024–26), a participatory project currently led by Serena in collaboration with Museum as Muck and others, aimed at developing practical tools for sectoral change.

Serena is Vice-Chair of ICME (ICOM, 2022–25), ICOM’s International Committee for Museums and Collections of Ethnography, reflecting her commitment to sectorial impact. Her work on Qatar’s museums has featured in The Art Newspaper and its Week in Art podcast. She received the University of Leicester’s Doctoral Award and Inaugural Lecture in 2015 for her impactful and accessible scholarship.

Selected publications

• Iervolino, S. and Sergi, D. 2023. ‘We Need to Talk about Class. Towards a Class-Based Approach in Contemporary Museum Theory and Practice’. Museum Worlds: Advances in Research. Vol 11: Issue 1, 51-63.
• Iervolino, S. 2023. ‘Co-curating with trans people: the challenges of collaborating with heterogenous minoritised communities’. Museum Management and Curatorship, 38:2, 117-140.
• Iervolino, S. 2020. ‘Qatar’s accelerated developmental model of its museum sector: actors, policies and their limitations’. In Wakefield, S. (ed.) Museums of the Arabian Peninsula: Historical Developments and Contemporary Discourses. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp. 67-84.
• Iervolino, S. 2020. ‘Curating Contemporary Global Art in Doha, Qatar: Anticipated “Conversations,” Undesirable Controversies, and State Self-Censorship’. In Marstine, J. and S. Mintcheva (eds.) Curating under Pressure: International perspectives on negotiating conflict and upholding integrity. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 51-71.
• Iervolino, S. and Sandell, R. 2016. ‘The World in One City: Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam’. In Butler, S. R. and Lehrer, E. (eds.) Curatorial Dreams: Critics Imagine Exhibitions. Montreal & Kingston, London and Chicago: McGill-Queen’s University Press, pp. 211 – 230.