Victoria McGuinness

Image of Victoria McGuinness with light tan background and plaque
Head of Cultural Programming and Partnerships at TORCH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Victoria McGuinness is Head of Cultural Programming and Partnerships, overseeing three teams that support humanities research engagement through facilitation of interdisciplinary and international networks, fellowships and public engagement with research - with TORCH, Knowledge Exchange, and the Humanities Cultural Programme.

 

Victoria has worked in Museums and Higher Education for the last fifteen years and has a PhD in the area of museum and cultural project management, working in Greece, Spain, Portugal on archaeological and museum projects.

 

Before joining TORCH in 2014, Victoria was at the Ashmolean Museum as a Project Manager for seven years, working on the £61 million Redevelopment of the Ashmolean Museum, overseeing the object processing and mount-making for the 12,000 objects installed in the 35 new galleries!

 

Victoria talks about:

  • Being a Creative Project Manager where you have 360 influences

  • Getting assessed as dyslexic at 21, and the financial barriers to getting an assessment 

  • Being good at detail & and the strategy, always looking far ahead and seeing the bigger picture

  • Doing a degree in classical archeology, and the ability to have a vision beyond what is visible 

  • How being agile in stepping outside one's comfort zone for her comes from being dyslexic

  • The need for neurodiversity

 

Please follow the link to the interview.

 

“My grasshopper-ness is because I like doing multiple things at the same time, I like weaving things together and I like communicating with people.”

 

“We have got to get to a space where we normalise and recognise dyslexia in both the need for accomodation but also the opportunities and advantages of having people thinking in different ways. [...] If we all thought the same way we wouldn’t be human.”

 

“At the age of 8 I was not at the reading level I was meant to be. I changed primary schools and some fantastic teachers said why is Vctoria so far behind, she is obviously intelligent, but i hadn't had any help in my first school and I’d been left. [..] every time I went to the teacher and said I don't understand, I can't read this, I don't know how to write this, she would give me colouring in. So at 8 I couldn't do very much at all.”