Viviane Gosselin

Doctoral Candidate, University of British Columbia; and Curator of Contemporary Issues, Museum of Vancouver

Viviane Gosselin is a SSHRC-CGS recipient and doctoral student at the University of British Columbia in the Faculty of Education. She has an academic design background and has produced and led several exhibition teams in museums for the past fifteen years while serving on peer review committees to identify best practices in Canadian museums (Canadian Museum Association and Canadian Heritage). BodyWorks II, an exhibition project she led at Science World in Vancouver, was awarded best science exhibition in Canada for 2007 by the Canadian Association of Science Centres. She works with Dr. Peter Seixas, her doctoral research supervisor, in analyzing the data of a national survey and pan-Canadian research project titled Canadians and Their Pasts. She is working with the Museum Studies program at the University of Leicester (UK), co-editing a book on national museums to be published by Routledge in 2010-11. As part of her research project, she is exploring the heuristic potential of a historical thinking framework to study exhibition production and reception in history museums. She is currently Curator of Contemporary Issues at the Museum of Vancouver.

Publications, Grants, and Presentations

"Historical Thinking in the Museum: Open to Interpretation." In New Possibilities for the Past: Shaping History Education in Canada, edited by Penney Clark. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011.

With Peter Seixas and Kadriye Ercikan. "Canadians Confront the History Wars." Canadian Diversity/Diversité canadienne 7(1) (2009): 50-54.

With David Anderson. "Private and Public Memories of Expo '67: A Case Study of Montreal World’s Fair, 40 Years After the Event." Museum and Society 6(1) (2008): 1-21.

With Susan Ashley and Jennifer Parker. "NaMU: EU Museum Project Connects and Educates Scholars from Around the World." Muse 26(6) (2008): 36-9.

"Ambitious and Daring: North Vancouver’s Presentation House Gallery." Muse 26(4) (2008): 32-5.

"Mapping New Trajectories: The Case of the Exhibition Frontières at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, France." In NaMu III: National Museums in a Global World. Linköping University Electronic Press, Sweden, 2007.
http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/031/011/ecp0703111.pdf