Diversity and Discourse: Engaging Museum Visitors in the 21st Century

4rd International Conference of the Centre of Excellence for Museum Education, November 27 & 28, 2025

This event builds on our previous conferences “Museums as Social Institutions – Trust and Communities” (2023), “Audience Development – Theory and Practice” (2021) and “Interdisciplinary Research on Museums as Informal Learning Spaces – New Ways and Concepts” (2019). The 2023 conference focused on museums as source of trust, the 2021 conference centered on ways to reach non-visitors and support socially and educationally disadvantaged groups, whereas the 2019 conference examined the results of visitor studies in the Leibniz Research Museums.

For our 2025 conference, academic researchers and museum practitioners from around the world were invited to examine and discuss two current topics:

• Museum discourse and museums as places of discourse in the 21st century
• How to welcome and engage all audiences and celebrate diversity

Sessions were designed to provide theoretical and practical input through a keynote and short talks followed by the opportunity to exchange thoughts in plenary discussions. Further conference activities such as a poster session and transfer elements were included.

The full conference programme with an overview of all of the speakers, sessions and background information can be found in the conference booklet 2025. 

Conference day 1: Diversity (Keynote and Short Talks)
 Conference day 2: Discourse (Keynote and Short Talks)