Compiled by Milo Phillips, Digitisation Co-ordinator at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Welcome to the January edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.

Happy New Year everyone, and welcome to the first Digital Digest of 2025.

Digital Digest is a monthly blog series featuring the latest on where to go, what to see and do in the natural history sector including jobs, exhibitions, conferences, and training opportunities. We are keen to hear from you if you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest, please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Sector News

First, we have a few conference deadline reminders for the start of the year:

NatSCA Conference & AGM 2025

The 2025 NatSCA conference Call for Papers is closing soon! The deadline to submit is 5pm GMT Friday 17th January. Get in touch with the committee with any questions (conference@natsca.org). We look forward to reading your submissions!

Making a Difference: Showing the Positive Impact of Natural History Collections

The Annual Conference & AGM of the Natural Sciences Collections Association will be held on Thursday 8th and Friday 9th May 2025 at The University of Manchester, Manchester Museum.

Natural history collections are involved in a huge range of work that has enormous positive impacts on people and the planet – this is a conference to share these stories. The #NatSCA2025 conference invites proposals for presentations looking at impact, how our work is making a difference, how we measure it, how we show success, and how we advocate for collections.

We seek ideas from the natural history collections community, educators, collaborators, and beyond. We are interested in practical lessons, unique solutions, new collaborations, and to show what has and hasn’t worked. We are particularly looking for presentations that share the differences museums are making in:

• facing global challenges such as the biodiversity and climate crises, and environmental issues
• improving people’s lives
• changing laws
• social justice, restitution, and decolonisation

We will prioritise papers that focus on sharing ideas, tools, and guidance rather than simply reporting results. We want to make this conference practical and useful, so please try to reflect this in your abstract.

While we have a focus on people that work with natural science collections, we recognise that we can learn from researchers and others in the wider museum sector. We welcome submissions from anyone who wishes to share techniques and ideas with broader relevance and application.

Papers can be presented as: A 20-minute presentation (consisting of a 15-minute talk followed by 5 minutes of Q&A), a 5-minute lightning talk, or a poster stand. Talks can be presented in person or by submission of a pre-recorded presentation, with the option of Q&A then being conducted over live video stream (Zoom).

Deadline for submission: 5pm GMT Friday 17th January. Please see our website for how to submit a paper or email: conference@natsca.org

SPNHC 2025 – call for Sessions, Symposia and Workshops

The University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum are pleased to host the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) from May 27-31, 2025.

The conference website is now live at spnhc2025.ku.edu which contains preliminary information on Lawrence, Kansas transportation and travel options, and a tentative agenda for the meeting. This information will be updated with more details concerning accommodations, registration, abstract submission, and more become available.

The deadline for sessions, symposia and workshop submissions is January 10^th 2025. The deadline for travel grant submissions is January 31^st 2025. For more information, please visit https://spnhc.org/spnhc-2025-call-for-sessions-symposia-and-workshops/ .

NEW NatSCA BLOG POSTS for 2025

Do you have something exciting coming up next year that you’d like to promote? Is there a subject you’ve been itching to write about? With over 2000 views a month, the NatSCA blog is a great way of getting your work out there.

Jen is seeking blog posts for 2025, so if you have something in the pipeline that you would love to tell everyone about, drop her a line! This is an excellent opportunity to book yourself in a slot for any time in the year.

If you are interested but have any questions, please email blog@natsca.org. You can also find guidelines on how to contribute here: Guidelines for contributions to the NatSCA blog | NatSCA.

NatSCA Lunchtime Chats

The new lunchtime chats are for members only and run on the last Thursday of every month.

This series is supposed to be informal; no fancy equipment is needed; it will be put out over the NatSCA Zoom platform and there is no fixed format. There will be shaky walks through stores by mobile, demos, plain pieces to camera or traditional PowerPoints if that’s the best way to share images and info. For those who want to take part please email training@natsca.org to put forward your idea; if a stable internet connection for what you want to achieve is tricky, we can put up a pre-recorded video and then speakers can jump in at the end for the discussion.

Bring your sandwiches and a cuppa and we hope to see you on the day! All members will have received a link to join via Zoom (the same link works for all sessions) – if you haven’t, get in touch with membership@natsca.org.

Funding available – Art Fund

Art Fund is excited to open a new grant opportunity supporting museums, galleries, and cultural organisations in joining climate conversations with THE HERDS, an international project by The Walk Productions.

Featuring life-size animal puppets made from renewable and recyclable materials, THE HERDS will make a 12,000-mile journey from Africa to the Arctic. We’re offering funding for activities that connect young audiences to this journey, encouraging conversations about climate change in a vast work of public art and climate action.

Workshops and programming can build on or be inspired by the schools’ resources provided by THE HERDS or be created entirely afresh by participating museums and galleries. Grantees will also be supported with social media resources and webinars. Activities can vary from hosting workshops to school visits and more, taking place across May and June 2025.

The deadline to apply for funding is 20 January 2025.

You can find more information about the programme here.

Webinar: Environmental Justice work at Manchester Museum

NHM National Programmes are hosting their first webinar talk of the year on Wednesday 29th January with Manchester Museum’s Hannah Hartley and Chloe Cousins.

This talk will be a reflection from Hannah (Environmental Action Manager) and Chloe (Social Justice Manager) about environmental justice work happening at Manchester Museum: successes, challenges and potential/ hopes for future work! Register your attendance HERE.

Where to Visit

Collecting Coventry at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum

There’s still time to catch the current temporary exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum! Presenting the Herbert’s own collections across the museum and testing out new ideas in the natural science gallery, the exhibition runs until the end of April 2025. Further details can be found on the event page, and you can get some fascinating insights into the bigger picture of the exhibition process in our most recent NatSCA blog (below).

Breaking Ground at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Explore what the colourful archives of William and Mary Buckland reveal about science, status and society. This exhibition showcases important specimens and fossils along with drawings, prints and paintings made by Mary Buckland and others, which helped spread the understanding of extinct groups of animals and plants among the 19th-century scientific community.

Breaking Ground is free and will run until 29^th September 2025. See details here, and view the online exhibition here.

What to Read

Up on the NatSCA blog we have a detailed look at Collecting Coventry, a Temporary Exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum from Ali Wells, curator of the Herbert Collections, who gives a great overview of how decolonisation and visitor feedback were integrated into the exhibition and, some key lessons learned.

Collecting Coventry runs until 27^th April 2025. Details can be found on the event page.

Life is a (Dinosaur) Highway!

Hear from scientists at OUMNH about the stunning variety of dinosaur footprints recently uncovered during a dig at Dewars Farm Quarry, Oxfordshire. Researchers uncovered around 200 footprints and built detailed 3D models of the site using aerial drone photography – documenting the footprints in unprecedented detail for future research.

The dig will also feature in the exhibition Breaking Ground at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History where visitors will be able to view the original Megalosaurus fossils used in the first description of a dinosaur, see photographs and video footage from the dig site, and learn about the latest techniques used by palaeontologists to study dinosaurs.

Where to Work

Research Associate in Bibliography and Natural History Humanities – Cambridge University Library

The Cambridge University Library has now advertised details of the Munby Fellowship for 2025-2027. This year they are seeking applications that bring together bibliography, the history of the book trade, and Natural History Humanities.

Further information on the Munby Fellowship and project suggestions can be found here.

Salary: £40,247. Tenure runs 1^st October 2025 to 30^th September 2027. Details on how to apply can be found on the Cambridge University jobs portal.

Head Curator of Natural History Collections – Denver Botanic Gardens

The Denver Botanic Gardens are looking for a new Head Curator of Natural History to serve as head botanist and maintain all natural history collections, overseeing curatorial positions, collections staff, students and research programmes. This position also coordinates the plant-based studies for the region.

Salary: $66,627 – $85,000 pro rata. Application details and listing here.

Curatorial Assistant – Manchester Museum

An exciting opportunity at Manchester Museum who are seeking to appoint a part-time (21 hours – 0.6 FTE) Curatorial Assistant to work with Manchester Museum’s internationally significant Entomology Collection in providing comprehensive support to the Curator of and the Curatorial Team. They are looking for applicants who are enthusiastic and motivated with a keen interest in working in natural history collections, especially insects and/or other arthropods. 

This role involves assisting in the management, care and interpretation of entomological collections. Other responsibilities include supporting documentation, access to the collection, supervising visitors and volunteers, and facilitating public programmes. Preferably, you will have previous experience in working with insects or other arthropods collections and with museum documentation.

Apply via the website:The University of Manchester – Job Information | Apply for Curatorial Assistant – Entomology (Part time)

Before You Go…

If you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest please drop an email to blog@natsca.org. Similarly, if you have something to say about a current topic, or perhaps you want to tell us what you’ve been working on, we welcome new blog articles so please drop Jen an email if you have anything you would like to submit.