Over a thousand items from Stephen Hawking’s personal and professional life will go on public display at the Science Museum in London in 2028, and a new research studentship will shape how the exhibition talks about his disability. Museums often present disability through a narrow medical lens—focusing on diagnosis, limitation, or inspiration. This project addresses a gap: how to ethically interpret disability as an ordinary, integral part of human life, not a spectacle or a problem to be solved. The student, based at the University of Leicester’s Research Centre for Museums and Galleries and the Science Museum Group, will study Hawking’s collection to develop a practical framework for weaving themes of disability and care into exhibition design, storytelling, and visitor experience. If successful, the framework will change how the Science Museum Group handles disability across all its future exhibitions—not just the Hawking show. It could also serve as a model for other museums and cultural institutions seeking to move beyond tokenistic or medicalised portrayals. The impact is on public understanding: how millions of visitors encounter disability in science and culture, and how institutions think about accessibility from the start of exhibition planning, rather than as an afterthought.
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A collection of over a thousand items from the late physicist Stephen Hawking will be put on display at the Science Museum in London in 2028. The Science Museum Group (SMG) and the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG), University of Leicester will support a student with expertise in disability, ethics, interpretation and museum studies to carry out research that can inform and enrich the way we talk about Hawking’s life and relationship to disability in our exhibitions, research and public engagement. The research sets out to explore: -how to ethically integrate themes of disability and care (as an essential and everyday feature of human existence) into the Hawking project; -routes to communicating with audiences how science and technology (as all culture), relate to disability, choosing the stories and languages we use to engage with this; -implications for design, visitor experience and external communications. Focused on the Hawking Collection, the studentship will draw on SMG’s expertise in Physics and Science and Technology Studies, and RCMG’s leading-edge research around the ethics of interpreting disability in order to generate a framework for the ethical interpretation of disability at SMG. The insights generated will support SMG to reflect and act on content and related ethical considerations and to consider accessibility and inclusiveness throughout the exhibition development process. The collaboration will be a model of how to best integrate disability and care into museum content and environments beyond traditionally medicalized offerings.
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