Now that we at Study International have established that amuseology degree isn’t useless, here’s how you can use it to work with some of the biggest names in the entertainment and fashion industry.
That’s right, you don’t actually need to work in a museum. exPalumbo is here again to agree to this.
The thing is, she initially pursued museology with the intention of working in a museum. But life brought her to a different path — several times.
Palumbo graduated with a bachelor’s degree in linguistics from Fondazione Milano in Italy. Source: Isabel Palumbo
How a museology degree led to a call from Meta
Palumbo actually started out as a linguistics student at Fondazione Milano back home in Italy, with the idea of learning about languages, then working as an English teacher or a real-time interpreter. That was where her 18-year-old mind was at.
During her undergraduate degree, she stumbled upon Instagram filters.Not in a casual, scrolling-before-bed kind of way, but in a this-could-be-a-career sort of way.
One minute, she was deep into syntax and semantics; the next, she was experimenting with augmented reality and digital overlays.
That curiosity quickly snowballed, because she found herself joining a Facebook group dedicated to Instagram filters.
“I discovered so many more things along the way that made me switch paths,” Palumbo explains.
At the same time, she began diving deep into art history, particularly during the final year of her undergraduate programme. Suddenly, things started falling into place and intertwining — language, art, technology — not as separate interests, but as pieces of the same puzzle.
Palumbo decided to pursue a master’s in museology in the Netherlands because it combined her interests. Plus, the demand for interactive exhibitions worldwide was on the rise at the time.
“I really wanted to work in museums doing interactive exhibitions because I was already getting into tech at the time,” she shares.
She spent a year in the Netherlands pursuing her master’s, then a couple of months interning at the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, a colonial museum.
One day, she received a life-changing call.
“Meta came knocking and offered me to join a group of augmented reality developers,” Palumbo shares. “There were only 100 in the world at that point. Meta would send over projects, and we would create augmented reality campaigns.”
Then, TikTok came along. Then Snapchat.
As of today, Palumbo has been in the industry for over 10 years.
During her undergraduate degree, Palumbo also completed the Erasmus programme in Dutch Language and Literature at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Source: Isabel Palumbo
What jobs can you get with a museology degree?
There’s no doubt that Palumbo found various forms of success with a museology degree.
So much so that due to high demand for Meta projects, she founded her own company, Locus Solus Studio.
“I’ve been working as a contractor for Meta for small projects for over four to five years, and later, I was called to join a team,” she shares. “In 2020, Meta started giving my co-founder and me augmented reality projects that we had to start a company.”
Locus Solus Studio is an award-winning mixed reality boutique studio specialised in redefining the standards of 3D production by crafting high-quality CGI/AR ads for global clients.
Palumbo’s clients? The Palace of Versailles, Meta, Burberry, Marc Jacobs, RCA Records, Coachella, Sotheby’s, and ZARA.
She’s even worked on &TEAM’s augmented reality project for their latest single release “We On Fire”.
However, founding a company in a foreign country came with challenges.
“I had a hard time understanding the structure of companies,” Palumbo explains. “I didn’t know what a Limited Liability Company was or what was needed to build on. I even had to understand all the business jargon in a foreign language.”
The biggest challenge yet was to understand how to get paid.
“Meta was offering us jobs, and I knew that I needed to build a company to manage all the workload that was coming in, and figure out where the payments should go,” she shares.
Palumbo never thought she would found her own company. It wasn’t even part of her life plan. But thanfully her co-founder, Rachid van der Veer, was able to guide and support her.
On the side, Palumbo today creates social media content about how she builds her projects from scratch. She’s also a digital fashion lecturer at Amsterdam Fashion Academy and a digital fashion technologist at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, where she supports master’s students in their research and design projects.
