Elee Kirk

Dr Elee Kirk died peacefully in the Leicester LOROS Hospice at 6am on Monday 1st August 2016, after a battle with secondary cancer. Elee spent her final days at LOROS surrounded by friends, family and her partner Dr Will Buckingham, who shared the last decade and a half of her life.

Dearest Elee. For those of us who knew her professionally in the museum world we remember a very special academic whose ideas were rooted in practice. Elee's (2015) PhD thesis, which it was my great pleasure to supervise, has the engaging title Crystal Teeth and Skeleton Eggs: Snapshots of Young Children's Experiences in a Natural History Museum. The beautifully written thesis makes a valuable and creative contribution to the museum studies literature, notably drawing on Reggio Emilia philosophy of actively listening to the '100 languages' of the child in the context of the Natural History Museum Oxford. It was Elee who introduced us to the ideas of Loris Malaguzzi, Founder of the Reggio Approach, which emphasizes the importance of embodied knowledge, play and imagination across disciplinary boundaries, which resonates so well here in the School of Museum Studies.

Elee developed original data collection tools as part of her methodological approach, which was specifically designed to address the needs of the young participants (aged 4-6 years old) in her PhD research. To analyse the rich data gathered in the field from photography, drawing and interview, she developed considerable expertise with Nvivo and produced some extremely interesting results that have been applied to other research sites and disciplines, including the School of Law at the University of Leicester with Dr Dawn Watkins and at the Institute of Education London with Professor Pam Meecham where she was Senior Lecturer.

Perhaps most important in her approach to research is that Elee came to our PhD community in Leicester with extensive previous experience as a museum educator and as a facilitator in workshops for children, which equipped her with practical strategies to inform her theoretical knowledge. This background at the Thackery Museum in Leeds and at Think Tank in Birmingham led to her appointment here in the School of Museum Studies on a number of funded research projects, for Jocelyn Dodd Director of the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG) and for Dr. Vavoula's AHRC funded projects. Elee was also funded to speak at conferences internationally, on visitor studies in the US and for the International Council of Museums (ICOM) Committee for Education and Cultural Action (CECA) group in Croatia, where George Hein singled out her paper for special praise.

I am sure I speak for all her colleagues when I say it was such a joy to work with Elee. She was a gifted communicator and we are privileged have available at our Museum Studies website her PhD inaugural lecture, which she delivered at the University of Leicester in May 2016, which we. Elee Kirk, a kind and generous colleague, a 'big PhD sister' to all her peers, always calm and ready to give good advice, we will miss your dry sense of humour and ready smile.

Our thoughts are with Elee's family and with Will. Before her untimely death at age 38, Elee had planned to publish her research in book form; and when she realised there would not be enough time to refashion her work, she entrusted Will with the task. We look forward to eventually seeing her research in print form.

Dr Viv Golding, University of Leicester, School of Museum Studies
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