Talking about prisons

The Talking about Prisons project, funded by the British Academy, was completed between January 2024 and November 2025. The study investigated the social practices that inform visitor engagement with difficult heritage in prison museums drawing upon Peterhead Prison Museum as a case study. An Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis (EMCA) approach was adopted for data collection and analysis, using small Go Pro cameras to film visitor interaction across five exhibits at the museum. Exhibits were selected as they presented an opportunity to examine engagement with different types of difficult heritage at the museum. This included analysis of visitor talk, gesture, facial expression and interaction with space, objects and people. An adapted version of the Jefferson transcription system was used for EMCA analysis. An opt-out approach was used for data collection with visitors informed at the start of their tour via staff and an information leaflet, with the option to inform research staff ahead of exhibit entry if they did not wish to be filmed and the opportunity to contact the research team to withdraw data post-visit. A systematic approach to data management after collection ensured that all minors and vulnerable adults were removed from data analysis. Data provided in this data set is a subset of the wider data set used to inform published outputs and focus on the Cat O' Nine Tails and Murder Cell exhibits.