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Shannon Wilson is Head of Education and Outreach at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum. With a background in content creation that spans world-renowned institutions such as Publicis and Hearst Magazines, she also holds a masters in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology from Oxford University.
In her career she has worked with museums across the UK and Ireland such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, the RAF Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum. Shannon’s expertise lies in the intersection between art, STEM and heritage education. She is experienced in devising and delivering a range of educational programming for all age groups that celebrate both tangible and intangible heritage with the aim of inspiring social responsibility – from coding and space camps, to women’s history and immersive storytelling workshops.
EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum is a digital museum that tells the stories of people who left Ireland – from pioneers of science to those looking to escape famine. We use technology to bring history to life for our visitors and students, and one of our most popular ways of doing this is through gamification – both in our galleries and in our workshops. But is it really just all fun and games, or does getting visitors and students to interact with and build their own gaming experiences actually help to foster more engagement, understanding and empathy in regards to the stories we tell? And how can using games benefit museum visitors beyond this?