I am a specialist in the study of museums and material culture, and I am particularly interested in how museum artifacts are used to tell the story of the nation at different times. This all started when I went to Edinburgh, Scotland to get a Masters in Nationalism Studies. I have always been tempted by interdisciplinary work, but I had no intention of becoming a historian - that was a discipline too far, I thought. I'd stay in the social sciences, in politics, and look at what made national identity so powerful as a global organizing force. But then, wandering around the brand new Museum of Scotland, I realized that museums are spaces in which the nation and its identity are constructed and performed for the public, through the artifacts that they display, each time an exhibition is constructed. Once I started down this train of thought, I was hooked, and I haven't been able to stop poking, prodding, and asking impertinent questions behind the scenes of museums yet.