Interdisciplinary approaches to support innovation in university museums: insights and practices from the University of Macerata

The relation illustrates some practices which have been implemented in the last years by the “Paolo and Ornella Ricca” Museum of School History based at the Department of Education sciences, Heritage and Tourism of the University of Macerata (Italy). The aim is to present the design methodology that has been applied. The museum is focused on the historical-educational heritage, which – due to its highly specialised nature – has usually been considered a minor heritage, and difficult to exploit to offer educational products or even to accomplish the University’s Third Mission. Despite these premises, the results achieved have confirmed how applying an interdisciplinary approach – both in terms of bringing together experts in different disciplines, and in terms of interdisciplinary contents – actually allows to foster the intrinsic potential that the university museum has: i.e. to work as a laboratory for training, for innovating academic teaching, and for transforming the knowledge produced by universities to generate social and educational value.