Alicia Hughes

Alicia Hughes (she/her) is Sloane Lab Project Curator at the British Museum, where she works on histories of collecting with a focus on the transatlantic in the long eighteenth century. She is an interdisciplinary art historian, with an interest in historical collaborative artistic practices between art and science. Her writing has been published widely in academic journals, including The British Art Journal, Art, Antiquity & Law, and the Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies. Her work has been supported by fellowships and grants by the Max-Planck and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art among others. Alicia received her PhD in History of Art from the University of Glasgow as part of the Leverhulme Trust-funded ‘Collections: an Enlightenment pedagogy for the 21^st century.’ She previously served on the Association for Art History DEC Project Board (2016-21). Prior to this she worked with contemporary artists as Collections & Exhibition Manager at Salsali Private Museum in Dubai and was an Assistant Curator at The Hunterian, University of Glasgow.

As Sloane Lab Project Curator at the British Museum (2022-present), she has developed new cross-collection provenance research in the collection of Hans Sloane and led on participatory work and collaborations that address histories of colonialism within the collection. She developed the co-created National Programmes touring exhibition ‘For the curious and interested’ (2024) in Northern Ireland and Wales, which encouraged community groups to engage in conversation around the legacy of Sloane today.  She led the development of a new display in the Enlightenment Gallery at the BM (Sept 2024), that foregrounds new critical perspectives on Sloane’s legacy, particularly his links to transatlantic slavery.