Interview with John Durant by Harry Parker

Durant, John; Parker, Harry

doi:10.60875/48ry-gc80

Interview with John Durant by Harry Parker

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2025-05-05_JohnDurantInterview_Transcript_FINAL.pdf

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Durant, John

Parker, Harry

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May 5, 2025

Abstract

This interview hears John Durant discuss his long career working at the borderline between academia and museums. Having begun his career working in continuing education, first in Swansea and then Oxford, John took up a newly created post as Assistant Director and Head of Research and Information Services at the Science Museum in 1989. Alongside this role, John became the UK’s first Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Imperial College, where among other things he created a Master’s programme in Science Communication. In 2000, John left London to become Chief Executive of At-Bristol, a newly built specialist science centre, before becoming Director of the MIT Museum in 2005, where he also held an Adjunct Professorship in Science and Technology Studies. The interview focuses for the most part on John’s time at the Science Museum. He discusses the challenges of balancing an academic post at a university with a senior management role in a museum. He also discusses some of the changes that the Science Museum was undergoing during the late 1980s and early 1990s, under the directorship of Sir Neil Cossons. In particular, John recounts some of the tensions involved in pivoting the museum towards contemporary science and technology instead of the history of these subjects. John’s role as an early adopter and pioneer of what became known as the Public Understanding of Science is a major topic of conversation. He recounts his interest in the field as having stemmed from his early experiences in continuing education and then discusses the role of the Royal Society’s Committee on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) in bringing the term into more widespread use. He details how the Science Museum became involved in PUS initiatives, and his role in leading them. Finally, John discusses his recollections of working with industrial sponsors, particularly with regard to the Science Box programme of displays on contemporary topics that the Science Museum began in the early 1990s.