Category Archives for Jobs

NatSCA Digital Digest

Chameleon

Jobs and Traineeships

Norfolk Museums Service is offering six 12-month paid traineeships, including one post in natural history. The closing date for applications is 3 January 2016. See here for details.

Curatorial Assistant, Anthropology Audit: Natural History Museum (NHM), London. Six-month collections-based role. Applications close 7 December 2015.

Documentation Officer (job share): Horniman Museum & Gardens, London. 19 hours/week. Applications close 14 December 2015.

Events and Exhibitions

Introduction to Diptera Families. Oxford University Museum of Natural History. A two-day workshop on the ecology and identification of flies.

Gifts for the Gods: Animal Mummies Revealed. Manchester Museum. An exhibition showing how modern science can help explain the ancient practice of animal mummification. Open now until 17 April 2016.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2015. Natural History Museum, London. As always, this is a stunningly beautiful exhibition, and well worth seeing. If you can’t make it to London, you can also see it on tour at other museums around the UK.

Collected and Possessed. Horniman Museum & Gardens, London. An exhibition by artist Mark Fairnington, inspired by the collections of the Horniman, NHM, and Wellcome Collection. Open now, until 24 January 2016.

Around the Web

A WNPR podcast looking behind the glass of the taxidermy dioramas the the Peabody Museum.

Who’s digitising what? The New York Times guide to online natural science collections.

In pursuit of plants: The Marianne North Gallery at Kew.

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

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

A mounted skeleton of a fruitbat leers at the cameraYour weekly round-up of news and events happening in the world of natural sciences

Jobs

Research Assistant, Vertebrate Palaeontology – University of Birmingham. 12 month post researching 375 million years of the diversification of life on land!

Curator of Microlepidoptera – NHM, London. A great opportunity for any fans of minimoths!

Curator of Natural Sciences and Collections Access Manager – Tullie House Museum. Still a couple of days to apply for these two. The deadline is 10th August.

As always, see out jobs page for more opportunities.

Events

‘Digitisation’ seems to be the keyword for September…

NBN Crowdsourcing Data Capture Summit. The National Biodiversity Network is holding a one-day meeting on digitising specimen data through crowdsourcing, at Manchester Museum on 25th September.

iDigBio Vertebrate Digitization Interest Group will be holding a 4-part webinar series entitled The Value of Digitizing Vertebrate Collections. They will be held on Tuesdays in September at 3 – 4 p.m. EDT (7 – 8 pm GMT).

All webinars are 3-4 p.m. EDT and accessible at https://idigbio.adobeconnect.com/vertdigitization. Here is the schedule:
September 8: The Value of Digitizing Mammal Collections, Cody Thompson, University of Michigan
September 15: The Value of Digitizing Fish Collections, Andy Bentley, University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and President of SPNCH
September 22: The Value of Digitizing Herpetology Collections, Chris Phillips, Illinois Natural History Survey, University of Illinois
September 29: The Value of Digitizing Bird Collections, Carla Cicero, UC Berkeley and Lead PI for Vertnet

Around the Web

Time to re-curate those canid specimens? Genetic evidence indicates that the African golden jackal is a distinct species from the European golden jackal, and is actually much more closely related to wolves! And new genomic research has clarified the status of Eastern wolves and other North American canids.

'But I'm still a fox, right?'

‘But I’m still a fox, right?’

Working with the Public: How an Unusual Museum Enquiry Turned into Travels Through Time and Space. A great example of how engaging with enquiries can lead to fascinating insights into the past.

…And Finally

A request: We would love you to get involved in the NatSCA blog! It’s been rather quiet of late. I know you’re all probably off enjoying yourselves on holiday, but if you happen to visit a museum or an interesting exhibition while you’re away, why not review it for us? We’d love to hear tales of your adventures! And don’t forget, if you’re working on any projects or specimens that you think other people would be interested in, then the blog is the perfect place to share! Email submissions to: blog@natsca.org