New PHACS Collaboration in the United Kingdom: The Pub Museum Pilot

Co-producing the world’s first Pub Museum by championing the diverse (hi)stories

The Public History as a New Citizen Science of the Past (PHACS) project has the pleasure to announce a new collaboration with Charo Havermans, public historian and historic pub tour guide in London, the UK. Drawing on her experience as an academic and public history practitioner, Havermans aims to create a proof of concept for the world’s first Pub Museum, in response to the methodology developed by the PHACS project. Drawing on various methods of co-production ranging from consultations to surveys and interviews, she will facilitate conversations with heritage professionals, publicans, pub-goers and other stakeholders to give shape to a Pub Museum that reflects the diverse communities that continue to make the pub such an invaluable third space.

This collaboration will include intermediary deliverables, ranging from oral history beer mats to a co-produced pub history exhibition. The Pub Museum Pilot will especially focus on marginalised narratives. It echoes Havermans’s commitment to highlighting the hidden politics behind the history of everyday life.

Since 2020, The FNR ATTRACT project PHACS has been developing public history and participatory models for interpreting and communicating the past beyond academia in Luxembourg and Europe. Led by Prof. Thomas Cauvin, the PHACS’ team has been proposing, developing, constructing, and evaluating innovative participatory public history frameworks to engage and empower groups, associations, and users.

In 2025, PHACS embarked on an extended mission to tailor this knowledge further with practitioners, partner initiatives and institutions on the international level, focusing on the production of history with a public perspective beyond Luxembourg.

This new partnership is part of a series of pilot projects that Dr. Myriam Dalal and prof. Cauvin will accompany, with practitioners of public history from across the globe. The practitioners will each work on a specific project that they built and that uses one of the PHACS previous sub-projects as a model to challenge, tailor, reflect on and further develop. We hope that each of our new partners will help enrich the practice of public history for public audiences and academics alike.

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