Tag Archives for Geological Curator’s Group

NatSCA Digital Digest – September 2025

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

Welcome to the September 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

Call for Papers – GCG special issue of Geological Curator.

This is reminder of the upcoming GCG special issue of Geological Curator. This issue will be published in Spring 2026, titled ‘Moving towards equitable Geoscience Collections’.

The purpose of this issue is to consolidate current research and initiatives that aim to improve the environment, accessibility, and future of geological collections. Broad themes welcomed in this issue include anti-colonial practice, physical accessibility, neuroinclusive practice, and representation of minority groups. Submissions can include topics relating to museums broadly, but submissions with a Geoscience collections focus would be preferred.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – June 2025

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

Welcome to the June 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

NatSCA Annual Conference & AGM 2025 Recording 

On May 8th and 9th 2025, NatSCA hosted ‘Making a Difference: Showing the Positive Impact of Natural History Collections’, the 2025 NatSCA Conference at the Manchester Museum. This conference was recorded and can now be viewed online on our YouTube channel here.

Society for the History of Natural History Summer Meeting 2025 – online registration open

The SHNH are offering an online attendance option for this year’s summer meeting, ‘A Sense of Nature’ on 19th and 20th June 2025. Registration for in-person attendance has now closed.

The conference will explore the intersections of the senses – including sight (vision), sound (hearing), smell (olfaction), taste (gustation) and touch (tactile perception) – with the history of natural history. The programme will feature 12 papers across six sessions.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – May 2021

Compiled by Glenn Roadley, NatSCA Committee Member, Curator of Natural Science at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery.

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 really keen to hear more about museum re-openings, exhibition launches, virtual conferences and webinars, and new and interesting online content. If you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

NatSCA Conference 2021: Environmental Breakdown and Natural Science Collections

The NatSCA 2021 conference and AGM will take place on 27th and 28th May, online via Zoom. 9.50am-4pm BST (UTC +1). The #NatSCA2021 conference will explore the role of natural science collections in addressing or engaging with one of the planet’s biggest issues – environmental breakdown; as well as sharing other exciting developments from the sector.

The conference will include an engaging range of keynotes, presentations, panel discussions, quick-fire ideas lightning talks and virtual tours.

Tickets are now available, and all are welcome. This event is free for NatSCA members. Of course, new members are welcome, and Personal Membership costs £20 per year (which is the same as the conference registration fee for non-members).
You can join up here: http://www.natsca.org/membership
NatSCA has also made a small number of free tickets available for unwaged non-members who might not otherwise be able to attend.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – February

Compiled by Glenn Roadley, NatSCA Committee Member, Curator of Natural Science at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery.

Welcome to the February 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 really keen to hear more about museum re-openings, exhibition launches, virtual conferences, webinars, and new and interesting online content. If you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Where to Visit

There are plenty of things to see and do online this February. Throughout 2021, the Science Museum is running a series of Climate Talks, with three taking place this month on the 13th, 15th and 12st and previous talks available to watch via the Science Museum website.

National Museum Cardiff is hosting an online Dino Nights sleep-over event for children, including fort-building and a torch-lit tour with a dinosaur expert.

For those wanting to use the time at home to brush up on some natural history ID skills, the Tanyptera Trust are continuing their series of webinars, with events in February focussing on nocturnal ichneumonoid wasps and centipedes.

And just missing February, but pre-dating our next Digest, the Museums Association will be hosting a Climate Crisis event for members on March 3rd, part of their Coronavirus Conversations series.

The last of our NatSCA blogs covering the NatSCA Decolonisation Conference have now been published, completing the series. The whole conference is now available to watch any time for free via YouTube, so be sure to catch up with these powerful talks if you’ve not yet had the chance.

Register now for this ONLINE DAY MEETING 10.00–14.00 FRIDAY, 12 MARCH 2021.
This meeting will bring together researchers from different disciplines (natural sciences, evolutionary biology, philosophy, history of science and gender studies) to discuss ‘race’ and ‘sex’ in Linnaeus’ work and beyond.
This event will take place online using Zoom webinar.
  • Ticket price is £5 for Fellows, Associates and Student Members / £10 for the general admission
  • Registration is essential, and will close 24 hours before the event is set to begin

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Project Update: Accessing Staffordshire Geology

Written by Glenn Roadley, Curator (Natural Science), The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery.

About this time last year, The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery was successful in a bid to the Arts Council England Designation Development Fund, securing funding of £72,500 to catalogue and display its nationally significant geology collections. The Designation Development Fund provides funding for projects which ensures long-term care of Designated collections and maximises their public value.

Ammonites in Ted’s collection before it was transferred to the Museum. © The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery

In early March 2020, just days before the museum closed and the country sank into lockdown due to Covid-19, I contributed a summary of the project to the Geological Curators’ Group blog (you can read it here). It really does show how quickly everything changed – at the time of writing the original blog, we were expecting the project to kick off in June 2020, beginning with the recruitment of an Assistant Curator to carry out the documentation of geological specimens bequeathed to the museum by Ted Watkin. This collection, comprised of about 2,000 fossils mostly originating from around Staffordshire, is to form the basis of the project and the new displays, highlighting the history and importance of the Carboniferous coal fields under Stoke-on-Trent.

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