Training as a Heritage Community: Undergraduate Internships at the Forthcoming Museum of Geography of the University of Padua

Between 2015 and 2018, when it was still in its project stage, the Museum of Geography of the University of Padua hosted sixteen student interns in Heritage and Tourism Studies, who were asked to participate in various tasks connected to museum set-up. Their involvement in the crucial mechanisms of the nascent museum activated strong personal motivation, reflected in the high quality of their work. Moreover, they had the chance to experience, as main actors, their belonging to the academic heritage community. Even though the internship programme’s context cannot be reproduced exactly, the programme nonetheless offers good practice insights that can guide the design of future training proposals.