Alyssa Wong is a talented researcher completing her MA in Cultural and Creative Industries at King’s College London, researching how artificial intelligence (AI) and digital tools can enhance accessibility in UK museums.

Research interests

Her research lies at the intersection of museum studies, accessibility, and technology. She is interested in how museums are adopting AI-driven and digital tools, from audio description to wayfinding, and what these tools mean for disabled visitors in practice. Her dissertation, Artificial Intelligence and Accessibility in Museums: Tools, Challenges, and Institutional Responsibility, investigates this through semi-structured interviews with museum professionals and independent sector specialists, analysed thematically using both inductive and deductive coding. She draws on the Social Model of Disability, Disability Gain, Inclusive Technical Capital, and Ocularcentrism as some of the key theoretical frameworks.

She has recently presented her research and preliminary findings at the King’s Postgraduate Arts and Humanities Summer Conference. This was a valuable opportunity to see how the project lands with a wider academic audience and to explore the research being undertaken by her peers.

Building this research through practice

Alongside her dissertation, Alyssa works on several projects that have shaped her understanding of accessibility in museums. During her MA, she completed the modules Collecting Cultures: Managing Collections in Museums and Collecting Organisations and Exhibitions, Identities and Politics: in Museums and Other Exhibiting Organisations. For the latter module, she was involved in an academic capacity through her role as a Student Partner on Layers of Vision (LoV), a King’s College London research project focused on improving accessibility for blind and partially sighted artists and visitors within art galleries and museums. She attended the LoV workshop, translated findings related to accessibility and disability, and presented to three postgraduate seminar classes. She has also worked as a research assistant and rapporteur for Dr Serena Iervolino’s project, Addressing the Elephant in the Room: Museums and Class Differences (2024 to 2026), which investigates working-classness in museum leadership, in partnership with Museum as Muck and several activists.

This year, she has also started working part-time at the Science Museum, which has been valuable in showing how visitor experience and accessibility translate into the day-to-day realities of a museum. She hopes to continue her career in museums after her MA and contribute to how the next generation engages with arts and culture.

Before museums

Before moving to London, Alyssa grew up in Sydney and studied Finance and Banking at the University of Sydney. She spent a few years working across investment banking, treasury, and equity research before moving into arts and culture. While this background has given her a useful lens on institutional structures and commercial awareness within the creative field, her career shift was driven by a desire to do work that felt meaningful. Museums and culture became the area that resonated most with her, particularly where institutional decisions shape who gets to participate.

She will be sharing more as the dissertation progresses and welcomes contact from anyone whose work aligns with these interests.

If you wish to get in touch, please use the form below to contact Alyssa directly: