Giuseppe Albano

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Your time at the University

When the time came to choose a university to my mind there could be no place more suitable for studying English Literature than Edinburgh, given the university’s remarkable contributions to centuries of Scottish intellectual history and the city’s abundance of libraries.

My memories of the range of teaching styles and personalities I encountered there will stay with me for life, and the freedom the course gave students to pursue and develop their own interests and opinions was a major plus, but also at times an exciting challenge. Edinburgh has never been the kind of place for those who just want to learn how to give the right answers to get their degree.

Tell us about your experiences since leaving the University

Following my degree at Edinburgh I completed a masters at York followed by a PhD at Cambridge University, after which I returned to Edinburgh as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities where I also taught some of the modules I had once taken myself. I was happy to see that the feisty intellectual spirit of Edinburgh still lived on, and I believe still does.

I left Edinburgh University for a second time to work for the Hawthornden Foundation, where I oversaw the creation of a new library in the grounds of Hawthornden Castle in Midlothian, Scotland, a retreat for international writers established in the former home of the seventeenth-century poet William Drummond of Hawthornden and later owned by the legendary American patron of the arts Drue Heinz DBE. I have since devoted my career to the museums and cultural heritage sector, with a focus on institutions rooted in literary-historical and biographical significance, and I took a Postgraduate Diploma in Museum Studies at Leicester University to help me on my way.

From 2011 to 2022, I served as Curator and Director of the Keats-Shelley House in Rome, a museum devoted to the English romantic poets who lived in and were inspired by Italy, before relocating to London to lead the Freud Museum in Hampstead, the final home of the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud. In June 2025 I took up the role of Director of Trent Park House of Secrets, a new museum of national importance set to open in north London in 2026 in the former home of politician, cultural patron, and tastemaker Sir Philip Sassoon, whose glamorous parties played host to leading figures of the age including Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, and T. E. Lawrence. 

To this day my passion for museums and cultural heritage can be traced all the way back to my love of literature as an undergraduate at Edinburgh. Those formative years laid the foundation for a lifelong interest in how people, places, and stories are preserved and interpreted, an interest that continues to inspire my work in cultural leadership today.

Alumni wisdom

Edinburgh University inspired me to read voraciously and encouraged me to think critically. I will always consider myself lucky to have had the excellent education I had.  

Related links

Dr Giuseppe Albano receives an MBE for services to UK/Italy relations in the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours