Charlotte Pacey

I joined the school in 2017, completing a BA in Geography and an MSc in Applied GIS at the University of Sheffield. During this time my research interests focused on gender inequality in academic & urban spaces, and the use of participatory methods.

I took 2 years away from academia, working as a hydraulic modeller for an environmental consultancy, before returning in 2024 to begin my PhD. My PhD is a CDA project partnered with The Science Museum & is AHRC funded through the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities.

Student Loneliness: Curating Experiences and Breaking Silences

This project investigates young peoples’ loneliness through a museum-based participatory study involving undergraduate students. It explores student loneliness through objects, through which participants will explore their own experiences of loneliness, post-pandemic. Participants will be involved in curating, collecting, interpreting and exhibiting artefacts, and using these as catalysts for wider conversations about loneliness. This work builds upon a partnership between cultural geographers at the University of Sheffield and curators of medicine at the Science Museum.

Aims:

1. Contribute new knowledge about the relatively neglected phenomenon of youth loneliness by investigating experiences of students in higher education during and since the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. Examine loneliness as a physical (embodied and material) rather than purely cognitive phenomenon.

3. Bring new dimensions to museum practice through innovative community engagement and participatory methods.

4. Advance the theory and practice of curating and collecting, archiving and preservation, object and collections discovery.

Supervisors: Prof Richard Phillips, Dr Luke Temple, Selina Hurley (The Science Museum Group)