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NatSCA Digital Digest – July 2024

Compiled by Milo Phillips, Digitisation Coordinator at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Welcome to the July edition of the NatSCA Digital Digest.

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

SPPC Registration and Call for Abstracts

Registration for the Symposium on Palaeontological Preparation and Conservation is now open!

The deadline for abstract submission is July 31st and, the symposium will be run in a hybrid format. Afternoon tours of the university archaeological laboratories will also be available.

For more information on SPPC and to see past abstracts and posters, please visit their website.

Call for Papers – Book of Nature, Nature of Books: Practices of Female Botanists

The research centres TIL (Université de Bourgogne) and EMMA (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) are organizing a bilingual, international, interdisciplinary conference on the role of women in the development of botany as part of visual, manuscript and print cultures, from the Middle Ages to the contemporary period.

Discussions will focus on the history of natural sciences, print culture, book history, illustration studies, gender studies, plant studies and ecocriticism and the organisers welcome papers on a wide range of case studies, from archives and museum collections to the garden itself.

Please send a 300-word abstract and a biobibliography (in English or French) before 31 October 2024 to the following address: bookofnature2025@gmail.com

The full details can be found here.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – May 2024

Compiled by Ellie Clark, Collections Moves Team Leader at the Natural History Museum.

Welcome to the May edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.

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

Registration is now open for the 13th European Bird Curators Meeting, October 2024, in Liverpool.

The European Bird Curators Meetings aim to promote cooperation, dissemination of best practices and new techniques in the curation, management, and use of bird collections. Presenters in the scientific programme often include curators, collection managers, museum historians and ornithological researchers. These are friendly meetings and anyone with an interest is welcome to join us.

The meeting will include plenary and submitted presentations, discussion sessions, collections tour, conference dinner (optional – Tuesday 29th October) and field excursion (optional – Thursday 31st October). 

Please follow the ‘Tickets available here’ link from the event webpage to register. They have single day registration options and have kept costs as low as possible to encourage attendance by local natural history curators. 

If you have any questions, please email vertebratezoology@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk.

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Divorced or Separated? Naming the Specimens on Display at the Zoologisches and Palaontologisches Museum, Zurich.

Written by Richard Crawford, who has just completed a PhD thesis at the University of the Arts London, entitled ‘Re-presenting taxidermy, Contemporary Art interventions in Natural History Museums’.

Do people read labels in museums? If they do, what do they learn about the object on view? It has been the custom to use labels to give factual names to the things on display in scientific museum displays, but Art curators have taken a different approach and put titles to works that suggest a particular reading of the artwork. These may be suggested by the artist. A good example of this style of labelling is Damien Hirst’s ‘Mother and Child divided’, an artwork that used preserved specimens.

For this work, Damien Hirst famously sawed a cow and a calf in half and exhibited the separate halves in tanks filled with formaldehyde, which he placed apart with sufficient space for a viewer to walk between the two halves of each animal carcass so that they could observe the internal organs of both cow and calf. When it was exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1995, it helped win him the Turner Prize. The title was ironic. Hirst’s work critiques romantic depictions of the animal as part of harmonious natural order, a place in which mothers protect and nurture their young according to supposedly universal maternal instincts. In place of natural harmony, he presented the viewer with the disjuncture and division brought about by human intervention that brought early death to these two animals, destined for the meat market.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – January 2024

Compiled by Milo Phillips, Assistant Curator of Entomology, National Museums Scotland.

Welcome to the January edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.

Wishing a Happy New Year to all our readers!

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

NatSCA 2024 – Submission Reminder

There’s still time to submit for the 2024 NatSCA Annual Conference! The Annual Conference & AGM of the Natural Sciences Collections Association will be held on Thursday 18th and Friday 19th April 2024, in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Papers can be presented in any of several formats: A 20-minute presentation (consisting of a 15-minute talk followed by 5 minutes of Q&A) or a 5-minute lightning talk. Talks can be presented in person or by submission of a pre-recorded presentation, with the option of an in-person or live stream Q&A (via Zoom).

Deadline for submission: 5pm GMT Friday 19th January. More info and submission forms here.

Museums and Galleries History Group 2024 Symposium

A one-day symposium held at the University of Leeds and online. Microhistory aims to direct attention towards marginal(ized) voices and perspectives and emphasizes the agency of the ‘ordinary’. This symposium will explore the relationships between large historical narratives and individual case studies and their use in disrupting established grand historical narratives, countering oversimplification.

The symposium will be held on January 26th. More information and registration here.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – December 2023

Compiled by Olivia Beavers, Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at World Museum, National Museums Liverpool.

Welcome to the December edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.

This is the last Digest of 2023 – packed full of festive activities and the latest on where to go, what to see and do in the natural history sector including jobs, exhibitions, conferences and training opportunities. If you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Sector News

NatSCA Conference & AGM 2024 – SAVE THE DATE & CALL FOR PAPERS

The Annual Conference & AGM of the Natural Sciences Collections Association will be held on Thursday 18th and Friday 19th April 2024 in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The first day will include the AGM, presentations, and lightning talks. The second day will include presentations in the morning, followed by gallery and collection tours in the afternoon.

Trials and Triumphs: sharing practice across the museum sector

The #NatSCA2024 conference invites proposals for presentations on a broad range of themes. 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 with projects.  We are looking for presentations that touch on every aspect of museum operations, including audience engagement, collections management practices, changing laws, social justice, restitution and decolonisation, environmental issues, global challenges, research and academic engagement.

This practical conference aims to celebrate triumphs and amplify successes in museums, but also highlight the pitfalls and lessons learned from situations that didn’t go as planned. 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 natural science collections, we recognise that we can learn from others in the wider museum sector, and we welcome submissions from anyone who wishes to share techniques and ideas with broader relevance and application.

Papers can be presented in any of several formats: A 20-minute presentation (consisting of a 15-minute talk followed by 5 minutes of Q&A) or a 5-minute lightning talk. Talks (both lightning and longer) can be presented in person or by submission of a pre-recorded presentation, with the option of an in-person or live stream Q&A (via Zoom).

Deadline for submission: 5pm GMT Friday 19th January. Please email conference@natsca.org with any questions.

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