Elizabeth Scott appointed director of the National Museum of Computing

Elizabeth Scott – the 2025 winner of the Museums Change Lives Radical Changemaker award – has been appointed as the director of the National Museum of Computing in Milton Keynes.

She joins the independent museum from Guildhall Art Gallery and London's Roman Amphitheatre, which she has led on behalf of the City of London Corporation since 2017.

Previously, she worked at the London Transport Museum as head curator and at Imperial War Museums as exhibitions manager. She started her career at the Museum of London working as an assistant curator and exhibitions project manager.

“I’m very excited to be joining such a wonderful team and board, and to be part of the National Museum of Computing’s incredible story,” Scott posted on LinkedIn. “There is such an amazing history here, and I’m really looking forward to helping shape the next chapter.”

Museums Change Lives Award

Elizabeth Scott won the MCL Radical Change Maker award in 2025. Social impact has been a focus of her career, from programming and collections to audiences and the workforce.

Her leadership of the Revealing the City’s Past project at London’s Guildhall Art Gallery, to reinterpret two controversial statues, was cited by the judges as a recent example of her collaborative and inclusive style – she designed it to amplify the voices of those most affected by the statues of slave traders William Beckford (1709-70) and John Cass (1661-1718).

Over three years, she assembled a team of contributors, mostly from the Caribbean diaspora, and collaborated with 41 partners. An intergenerational panel and accessibility panel were consulted. Community voices were an essential part of the project, and accessibility was embedded as a principle.

The National Museum of Computing, which first opened in 2005 as an independent charity, welcomed 19,292 visitors in 2025, up 51% from the previous year.

It is located in Block H on the Bletchley Park estate in Buckinghamshire, but is not part of the trust that runs the wider site.

The museum houses the world's largest collection of functional historic computers and world war two machines, including Enigma, Lorenz, the working Turing-Welchman Bombe, the rebuilt Colossus (the world’s first electronic computer), and the WITCH (the world's oldest working digital computer).

It recently acquired a fully functional replica of the first 1976 Apple computer, which was hand-built by Steve Wozniak and sold by Steve Jobs for $666.66. The object, which the museum says “represents the absolute dawn of the personal computing era”, was donated by one of its supporters.

The museum costs £30 for an annual adult ticket or £20 for a one-off visit. Local residents receive 50% off admission and concessionary rates are also available.

The museum’s former director Jacqui Garrad has led the organisation since 2019. She leaves at the end of this month to relocate to Yorkshire.