Dr Alison Eardley
Alison is an interdisciplinary researcher, whose work focuses on access and inclusion in the cultural sector. Originally trained as a cognitive psychologist, her work is focused on challenging ableism. Her PhD research explored imagination and imagery in the blind and sighted. During her first postdoctoral position, based at the University of Laval in Canada, Alison worked within an international interdisciplinary team of researchers exploring mental representation and movement in people with a disability. Her second postdoc at Birkbeck examined spatial representation using EEG. She now applies both psychological theory and mixed empirically grounded quantitative and qualitative research methods to the interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of the museum experience. She has used cognitive psychology to unpick the bias of the typically sighted majority in society, that often result in a privileging of visual information both within and outside the museum setting. Within this, she is challenging the assumption that just because you have vision, you have full access to the contents and experiences within a museum. Her work on inclusive audio description in museums has supported the principles of disability gain, which argue that 'access' tools and ways of living developed for and by disabled people can enhance the experiences for all. Her current projects are exploring how museum experiences can be made more accessible, both physical and conceptual, for all audiences. These concepts are currently being explored within the AHRC funded W-ICAD (Workshop for Inclusive Co-created Audio Description) project, which is working with museums in the UK and US to produce audio description co-created by groups of blind, partially blind and sighted people. They are also being explored within the AHRC funded Sensational Museum project, which is radically re-thinking the role of senses in the museum. It is putting disability at the heart of museum practice and audience experience, such that no one sense necessary or sufficient to experience a museum. Alison was a Fulbright-Smithsonian Scholar (2021–22), based at the Anacostia Community Museum.
Alison has been on BBC Radio 4's All in the Mind discussing the teaching and appreciation of art for blind and partially blind people.
Museum experience, Access, Museum impact, inclusive audio description, inclusive multisensory museum interpretation, and museum narratives
