Ever since the Ashmolean opened in 1683, complete with an experimental laboratory in the basement, the Museum's collections and keepers have played a vital role in the Oxford curriculum. Today, Ashmolean curators and conservators supervise doctoral research, convene seminars, give lectures, and teach classes and courses for the undergraduate and masters degrees.
In 2012, academic engagement at the Ashmolean was transformed by an extraordinary grant from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, establishing the University Engagement Programme, which enabled a wider range of museum-based teaching to be undertaken in a far broader cross-section of the University's departments and divisions. The Mellon grant was renewed for five years in 2015 and since then the generosity of the Barrie and Dee Dee Wigmore Foundation, the Ruddock Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art have ensured that this work remains at the cutting edge of Oxford pedagogy.
Cross-disciplinary partnerships with faculty members have broadened the range of subjects regularly employing object-centred learning in the Museum to include, for example, Medieval and Modern Languages, Geography, History, Tibetan Studies, Mathematics, Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, Law, Anthropology, Psychiatry, Neurology, Business and English Literature. The Faculty Fellowship Programme has brought fresh thinking to bear on the collections as Oxford academics have developed new and innovative teaching in partnership with the collections teams. The Eloquent Things course and the Krasis Programme continue to train early-career scholars in object-based teaching and learning, developing skills that will contribute to their own distinctive practice. Our Museum Our Voices has opened the Museum to new interpretations and perspectives from under-represented constituencies from the University and beyond.
