My PhD research is about pulling back the mask of benevolence and ‘inclusion’ in the UK museum sector to expose what is actually going on underneath.

I look at exhibitions on race and colonialism to analyse curatorial and artistic approaches. Specifically I investigate how white institutions use Black trauma and celebratory Black diversity as a progressive branding tool. My work examines how these approaches work as a protective strategy for whiteness.

I am interested in a pivot to exhibitions that expose rather than mask whiteness, and work that confronts whiteness and the ways it works and adapts to maintain itself.

I write in an autoethnographic style, with poetry and art weaved into my academic work, uncovering the dynamics of whiteness and the white sanctuary of the museum space in the lived experience of white working class Autistic identity.