Bio

Bethany Rex is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Her current research considers the impact of austerity policies on local authority museums in England, focusing on museum closures and the development of commercial initiatives within museums. Across both topics she is interested in the material effects of austerity, as well as how these financial changes alter the role/s that museums can play in communities.

Past projects include Creative Europe ‘Creative Lenses, a study investigating how arts and cultural organisations respond to the pressure to develop new income streams , and EU Horizon 2020 ‘CoHERE’, a mixed methods study exploring the role of heritage in developing communitarian identities.

In 2019, Bethany was a Faberlull resident on the Future of Cultural Institutions resulting in a publication on the role of voluntary groups in saving museums from closure.

Project

During my study I will be working on my monograph on museum closures. I will have recently returned from parental leave, so I will be reacquainting myself with debates relating to the Creative City, and thinking about the role of the museum within that concept.