Tag Archives for jobs

NatSCA Digital Digest – April 2026

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

Welcome to the April 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 2026: Registration Now OPEN!

Booking is now open for the Annual Conference & AGM of the Natural Sciences Collections Association (NatSCA) held on Thursday 14th and Friday 15th May 2026 at The Ulster Museum in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This year’s theme is: Collaborating and Connecting with Natural History.

Due to limited venue capacity, the conference is limited to 120 places. Please follow this link to the conference page to find out more information: https://www.natsca.org/event/2924.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions. If you would like to become a member, which would qualify you for the conference discount or bursaries, please see our website for details.

Please note that the early bird discount ends on the 14th April so get in quick if you want to get the cheaper rate!

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A Hundred Feet Through the Door – A Chance Encounter with some Centipedes set me on a Curatorial Path…

Written by Dan Gordon, Keeper of Biology, The Great North Museum: Hancock.

So, how did I get started in museums? Like perhaps many people, it began with a stroke of luck.

I’d decided to study Biology at university—I suppose I’d vaguely pictured myself at some point in the future, white-coated in the lab, pouring over spectrophotometer readings or agar plates. But by the end of the first year, I found myself staring out of the window during practicals. Nineteen-year-old me was slowly becoming disillusioned: Botany was biochemistry; Zoology was elegant mathematics; even Ecology was really an intricate forest of statistics, not trees. There was beauty in the numbers, but it was all a long way from my childhood passion for birdwatching, rock pooling and reading travel books. One day, peering at smudges on a petri dish and trying to work out if I’d just induced gene expression, I realised I might not be cut out for that imagined future. I was fascinated by the soul of the subject, but the finer points of its language were losing their magic.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – May 2025

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

Welcome to the May edition of NatSCA Digital Digest

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

Registration Now Open for SHNH International Summer Meeting

We are pleased to announce that registration is now open for the two-day international meeting ‘A Sense of Nature’. 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 event will be at Kelvin Hall, Glasgow on 19th June and 20th June 2025. The conference will feature 12 papers across six sessions, as well as collections tours and an optional conference dinner.

Full details are available here. Registration will close at 6pm (BST) on 28th of May 2025.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – May 2023

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. If you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Sector News

NatSCA Conference

The NatSCA annual conference and AGM was held at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery on Thursday 27th and Friday 28th April 2023. The focus this year was So how do we actually do all this? Hopeful futures and turning theory into practice for big issues in natural history collections.

With 86 delegates present each day plus over 20 online, it was great to welcome everyone back to physical NatSCA conferences. A huge thanks to everyone that attended and to our speakers for the brilliant talks! For those that were unable to attend, we’re hoping to make the presentations available online in the near future.

SPNHC Conference

The 38th Annual Meeting of The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections is being held in San Francisco, California 28 May – 2 June 2023. Full details here.

SHNH International Summer Meeting

This year’s SHNH International Summer Meeting, ‘The Language of Nature’, will take place at Thinktank, Millennium Point, Birmingham on Tuesday 13 June 2023 (with visits planned for 14 June). This one-day international meeting will explore the language of nature in its broadest sense. Over centuries, different formats and mediums, stylistic approaches and classification systems have been used to describe and represent the natural world. These ‘languages’ influence how we conceive of nature, how we categorise it, how we wonder at it and who we credit with its ‘discovery’. This conference aims to bring new perspectives to the history of natural history writing and other expressions of nature, exploring not only the creativity and originality involved but also the limitations and biases that shape our understanding of the natural world and how it has been perceived throughout history. Full details here.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – September

Compiled by Olivia Beavers, Assistant Curator of Natural Science at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery.

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 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.

What to do

As we move into the new school year, The Grantham Climate Art Prize is calling for messages of hope from young people on climate change – ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow this November. This is an opportunity for young people aged 12-25 to raise awareness for our precious habitats and send a message of hope through designing a mural to go onto walls across the UK – and be in for a chance to win £250 cash!  The theme of this competition is Biodiversity Loss and Climate Change. Click here to learn more – entries by 24.09.21.

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