Category Archives for Conference

NatSCA Digital Digest

Chameleon

News

Save the date! The 2016 NatSCA Conference & AGM will be held 21 – 22 April 2016 in Derby, at the Silk Mill and Derby Museum & Art Gallery. A call for papers and more details will follow. We look forward to seeing you there!

Jobs

Museum Manager, Great North Museum: Hancock. A great opportunity to manage the Hancock and its wonderful Natural Science collections. Applications close 12 November 2015.

Assistant Curator, National Museums Scotland. Two six-month posts in Natural Sciences, one working with the bird collections, the other with mammals and wet specimens. Applications close 16 November 2015.

Vertebrate Palaeontologist, Qatar Museum, Doha. A full-time, permanent position in sunny Qatar! Applications close 30 November 2015.

Events

26 November 2015: A talk about the #naturedata pilot system at the Natural History Museum (NHM), London. Flett Lecture Theatre, 2.30pm.

1 – 2 December 2015: Geological Curator’s Group (GCG) AGM. The full programme is now available online, and there is still time to book.

Around the Web

The National Guard had to be called in to airlift a baby Pentaceratops excavated by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

The Londonist went behind the scenes at the Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL.

Historic series of museum specimens have helped to solve the puzzle of the evolution of the sparrow’s bill.

A new species of bat has been discovered in the collections of the NHM, where it has resided in a jar since 1983. A relatively short shelf-life by museum standards!

NatSCA Digital Digest

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Conference

We will be holding our 2016 annual conference & AGM on 21st and 22nd April, generously hosted by Derby Museums. The venues will be The Silk Mill and Derby Museum & Art Gallery. So, it goes without saying, Save The Date!

Events

On 29th October there is a talk at the Natural History Museum on one of my favourite things: curatorial research!
‘Curatorial research gets a bad name when it serves personal ends, but can it help unlock collections for wider engagement?
This talk is based on a project to understand the life and work of a Victorian ornithologist, Henry Dresser.‘
Held at the Flett Events Theatre, from 2.30–3.30pm. Click here for details.

Speaking of my favourite things, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition is open at the Natural History Museum. If, like me, you’ve been avoiding social media so you get to see the images for the first time at the exhibition, you can now do so.

Around the Web

Did you know Manchester Museum has an important collection of almost 17,000 earwigs? A type catalogue of this fantastic resource has been published with a description of the collection and its history and is freely downloadable here.

The Love London Awards hosted by Time Out and voted for by the general public has issued its shortlists. In the Bloomsbury, Fitzrovia and Holborn area ten museums and collections are jostling for position, you can click here to vote. Two of the ten are natural history collections, and could be voted for, by you, if you so desired, just saying…

The Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy is often referred to as the friendly conference. Not just palaeontology, the conference also covers comparative anatomy and thus attracts a natural history audience as well. However the guise under which the conference is going to continue into the future is currently under debate, and those with an interested are being invited to comment.

NatSCA Digital Digest

Gorilla skull on a black background

Jobs and Placements

Life Collections Conservator (maternity cover) – Oxford University Museum of Natural History. A great opportunity to join the Oxford team. Applications close 21 October 2015.

Collections Administrator and Access Coordinator – Science Museum, London. A 6 month, fixed-term post. Applocations close 27 October 2015.

Two placement positions are available at Leeds Museums: with their Zoology collections, and on a Geoblitz Project. Applications for both close 31 October 2015.

As always, more opportunities are advertised on our Jobs Page.

Events

The Geologists’ Association’s Festival of Geology is on 7 November, at UCL, London. The festival includes talks, walks, stalls, displays, and a photography competition. Entry is free!

On 27 November, there is a free one-day conference at the Natural History Museum (NHM), London, entitled ‘Biotic Response to Environmental Change: Insights from Natural History Collections‘. Booking is via Eventbrite, where you can also see the full schedule of talks.

Save the date! The Geological Curators’ Group’s AGM is coming up on 1 – 2 December at NHM, London. This year the theme is ‘Not just rocks in the cupboard: communicating geoscience through collections‘. Further details have yet to be announced.

Around the Web

Controversy over the collection (and non-collection) of specimens seems to have reigned lately…

The first male moustached kingfisher to be observed was found by a research team from the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), and a single specimen was euthanised and collected. Following a negative reaction in the press, the lead researcher wrote an article defending the decision to collect this scientifically important specimen.

A new species of South African bee fly was described, solely on the basis of photographic evidence, with no physical type specimens preserved for study and comparison.

NatSCA Digital Digest

(Image by Ton Rulkens, in public domain)

(Image by Ton Rulkens, public domain)

 

Your weekly round-up of news and events happening in the world of natural sciences

News

The BBC just posted a down to earth (or sea) article called The man who swims with sharks, by Melissa Hogenboom, feature writer for BBC Earth. Combined with beautiful images, it talks about swimming with and photographing sharks and summarises some very interesting facts about these majestic animals.

Exhibitions

If you haven’t seen the Natural History Museums’ exhibition Coral Reefs: Secret Cities of the Sea, you should definitely go this weekend. If you have seen the Natural History Museums’ exhibition Coral Reefs: Secret Cities of the Sea, you should definitely go this weekend. It will be your last opportunity to see (or re-see) the exhibition as it closes on the 13th September. There are fantastic specimens, cool interactive games and a video of the only coral spawning ever to have occurred in captivity. I personally recommend it to you.

Opened just last week is the new exhibition In the Footsteps of Elephants. This two and a half week exhibition is only open from the 3rd to the 20th September, so if it’s up your street you need to get a wriggle on. The exhibition is being held at the Nature in Art Museum and Gallery in Gloucestershire, which looks really worth too.

Jobs

If you are looking to move, or move into a, role in natural sciences the Naturejobs Career Expo in London on Friday 18th September should be a great place to meet others in the field, attend workshops and conference talks, schmooze with potential employers, and even get your CV looked at.

If Brachiopods are your thing, then the Natural History Museum in London is currently looking for a curatorial assistant to join them in the Earth Sciences Department. The contract is for a year, and the deadline is the 14th September. Sounds like a shell of a good opportunity (!)

As ever, if you would like to write a blog for NatSCA on anything natural sciences related, give us an online shout blog@natsca.org.

NatSCA Digital Digest

 

NatSCA 2

Your weekly round-up of news and events happening in the world of natural sciences

Conferences and Workshops

As PalaeoSam mentioned in the last Digital Digest, the Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontolotgy and Comparative Anatomy is on next week. It is my personal palaeo highlight of the year and so am sad that I will miss it this year. (Though not too sad given I am missing it to be in Italy for the Grand Prix.) If you are attending and would like to do a super write up of the weeks’ events, please do let us know.  I look forward to experiencing SVPCA through the eyes of a blogger.

Jaguar

Those of you who are fans of F1 will know why this car is relevant to natural history (image in public domain)

News

Not really on the subject of natural history, but a topic that will touch the heart of any museum professional or visitor. ISIS have taken even more away from the us, the global nation, via the destruction of an Ancient temple in Palmyra. These open air museums are original sites of cultural heritage and are irreplaceable once gone. Not at the top of the list of the most tragic event of the last couple of weeks by any means, but a sad day for museums nevertheless.

News from the Blogosphere

The #MuseumInstaSwap phenomenon has launched as staff from some of the top museums in London (including the NHM and the Horniman) swap museums and take to social media to chat about it. An article in Time Out nicely summarises what is going on but a lot of the museums involved have their own exciting blogs on it worth looking up. Hence this is in the News from the Blogosphere section, see?

Highlights from the Papers

More and more, scientists are relying on Citizen science, as a means of collecting data. The mode of research is especially important in fields such as marine biology where the incorporation of sightings made by anglers, for example, can add significantly increase the size of datasets. An article in Nature called Rise of the Citizen Scientist explores the good the bad and the ugly of this practice as a research tool.

 

As ever, if you would like to write a blog for NatSCA on anything natural sciences related, give us an online shout blog@natsca.org.