Who we are

At Queen Mary University of London we bring together academics, postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students working on home in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (particularly in Geography, History, English and Drama). We have wide-ranging interests in lived experiences and ideas of home on domestic, urban, national and transnational scales.

The Museum of the Home in Hoxton, East London, specialises in telling personal stories of home. It is a place where everyone can explore what home means. The galleries, collections, library and archives, temporary exhibitions and creative learning programmes engage with debates and issues about the significance of home and domestic life in contemporary as well as historical societies.

  • Co-directors

    Alison Blunt

    Deputy Vice Principal for Impact (Culture, Civic & Community) and Professor of Geography, Queen Mary University of London

    Alison’s research focuses on home, migration and the city. She leads the AHRC project Stay Home Stories (funded as part of the UKRI rapid response to COVID-19) and has also worked with colleagues on Home-city-street, funded by the Queen Mary Centre for Public Engagement.

    Alison was lead supervisor on the centre’s AHRC CDA programmes on home, work and religion in London from the seventeenth century to the present. She has also acted as mentor for the centre’s three Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellows: Richard Baxter, Casper Laing Ebbensgaard and the late Azeezat Johnson.

    Her books include Home (with Robyn Dowling, Routledge, 2022, second edition) and Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian women and the spatial politics of home (Wiley, RGS-IBG Book Series, 2005).


  • Sonia Solicari

    Director, Museum of the Home

    Sonia joined the Museum of the Home as Director in 2017 and is leading the £18.1 million development project to transform the site and brand.

    She was previously Head of the Guildhall Art Gallery and London’s Roman Amphitheatre, where she worked since 2010, leading on a capital development of the gallery and the exhibitions programme. She also worked at the Victoria & Albert Museum where she saw the delivery of two major gallery developments; as Curator of Ceramics and Glass (2006-2010) and as Assistant Curator of Paintings (2002-2006).

    Sonia has published and lectured widely on aspects of nineteenth-century art and design, and contemporary collecting and display.

  • Steering Group

    Alison Anscomb
    Executive Assistant to the Director and Board, Museum of the Home

    Alison Blunt
    Professor of Geography, Queen Mary University of London

    Alex Brown
    Arts and Culture Manager, Queen Mary University of London

    Aurelien Enjalbert
    Creative Programming Assistant, Museum of the Home

    Rhodri Hayward
    Reader in History, Queen Mary University of London

    Aoife Monks
    Reader in Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies, Queen Mary University of London

    Alastair Owens
    Professor of Historical Geography, Queen Mary University of London


  • Danielle Patten
    Director: Creative Programmes and Collections, Museum of the Home

    Louis Platman
    Curator, Museum of the Home

    Paula Serafini
    Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries, Queen Mary University of London

    Sonia Solicari
    Director, Museum of the Home

    Gaynor Tutani
    Creative Programming Officer, Museum of the Home

    Rosie Watts
    Creative Learning Producer, Museum of the Home

    India Whiteley
    PhD Candidate, Queen Mary University of London