1. Museum back into ‘Natural History museum’
Putting the 
Museum back into ‘Natural History museum’
Mark Carnall
Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Object Lessons and Nature Tables

2. A Whistlestop history of natural history museums
Domenico Remps A Cabinet of Curiosity 1675(90)? [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

3. Institutes of science, not museums or ‘museums of museums’
A Whistlestop history of natural history museums
Cabinets of curiosities- founded large museums or were sold off- Linnaeus and Fabricius.
19th Century museums as core to university teaching and research botany, zoology, anatomy, geology
Hunterian 1807, CUMZ 1814, Bergen 1825, Grant Museum 1828, OUMNH 1860, Manchester Museum 1867
Institutes of science, not museums or ‘museums of museums’

4. Important scientists no longer museum curators
A Whistlestop history of natural history museums
1930s(?) Things go to pot.
Important scientists no longer museum curators
Ephemerisation of ‘non real’ specimens
Destruction of history, rationalisation, no record keeping.
60-80s the death of zoology, botany (not geology)
80s-today playing catch up with the rest of the sector (thanks 1930s)
Outside of universities a continual decline

5. University NH Museums Today
New generation of collections managers and ‘museum trained’ staff.
The value of ‘no data’ specimens
Use it or lose it
Inter/cross/multi disciplinary
Drivers from HEFCE and institutions
Focus on research, still scientifically oriented
Research based teaching and Teaching Excellence Framework an important movement

6. History of Natural History

7. History of Natural History

8. Image courtesy UCL, Grant Museum of Zoology

9. History of Natural History

10. UNIVERSITY MUSEUMS ARE DYING TO WORK WITH HISTORIANS

11. Cultures of Preservation
Workshop 1: Taxidermy-Animal Skin and Colonial Practice
Workshop 2: Wet-Preparations: Anatomy, Pathology and the Body Contained
Conference: Activating Stilled Lives. The Aesthetics and Politics of Specimens on Display

12. UCL Centre for Humanities Interdisciplinary Research Projects (CHIRP)
UCL Centre for Humanities Interdisciplinary Research Projects (CHIRP)
10 researchers, 10 objects, 100 hours lead by Leonie Hannan and Kate Smith
UCL, National Maritime Museum, British Museum, King’s College London, Queen Mary University London, Royal College of Art, V&A.

13. Legacy Driven by personal connections. ‘The Network’
Ironically poor at preserving our own history
Museum history always a subset of another history
Gallery curatorship studies
Back to requiring ‘hard’ outputs
What do museums get out of it?
Competition for CDP students

14. ‘Natural History Museum’ ‘Natural History Museum’
Putting the Museum 
back into
‘Natural History Museum’
Putting the Museum 
back into
‘Natural History Museum’
Mark Carnall
Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Object Lessons and Nature Tables

15. Object Lessons and Nature Tables:
Research Collaborations Between Historians
of Science and University Museums
University of Reading, 23 September 2016
With the 'material turn' in the humanities, historians of science are paying greater
and greater attention to collections of all kinds, and to their complex structures and
histories. University museum collections in the UK and across Europe form a
singular meeting point in humanities discourses for which history of science is
highly significant – such as environmental history, histories of colonialism, and
information histories.
What exactly does this new landscape of university researchers and their science
collections look like now? How do we approach the material culture of science?
What are the research projects taking place in this arena, and what is its future
potential? How do collaborations between curators and historians of science
function – especially inside university contexts? What are the examples of
innovative research conjoining university collections and historians of science?
When do teaching and research in history of science come together in collections
contexts? What public histories of science are being co-produced in universitybased
science museums? These epistemological and practice-based questions
will be the focus of this one-day conference co-sponsored by the Centre for
Collections Based Research and the Department of History of the University of
Reading, and supported by the British Society for the History of Science.

16. Dear Speakers;
We are delighted that you are able to come to University of Reading on 23 September 2016 to present object animations and papers at Object Lessons and Nature Tables: Research Collaborations Between Historians of Science and University Museums !
The full draft programme is now available online, and can be viewed here: 
We hope that you will be as excited as we are by the programme: if there is anything that you would like to discuss with us about your paper or its position in the programme, please do so as soon as possible so that we can make any appropriate adjustments as the co-convenors.  We can't promise to accommodate all changes, but we want to make this a wonderful experience for speakers as well as for delegates.
We will be in touch again nearer the time to make arrangements concerning audio visual equipment and other technical issues, but in the meantime we have the following comments:
The Programme is very full -- and very tight for timings.  It is crucial to keep to the 20 minute time limit that is accorded to ALL speakers alike.  Chairs will be asked to be very strict with their time-keeping, but it is always so much nicer when speakers honour each other by keeping to the schedule.  It also allows for Q+A which can be rewarding for speakers as well as delegates
When finalising your paper, please do refer to comments that we transmitted to you from the peer review committee and adjust your paper accordingly
As mentioned, we are asking even speakers to register for the event and to pay the modest registration fee (£15/£7.50) so that the three-way budget with sponsors and funders will balance.  You can now register at 
The British Society for the History of Science has asked us as co-convenors to give first refusal to the British Journal for the History of Science for a publication of conference proceedings: please let us know if your paper is already promised to other publications, and/or if you are interested in publishing in this context.  Again, we cannot promise, but indicators are helpful at this point.
Please notify your networks about this conference and the fact that it is now open for registration !

17. Mark Carnall (Oxford): Putting the Museum back into Natural History Museums
It is clear that the range of your activities and experience is considerable, and delegates will really benefit from hearing about pros and cons of collaborations from the curator’s point of view. Your first five paragraphs of your proposal outline the crucial context for some focused case studies from the wealth of your experience with natural historical collections, and will be helpful for the delegates. We would like to ask you to outline in depth on one or two case studies that can help delegates -- both curators and historians -- to understand how best to work together. These would be case studies outlining what works and how to plan and effect good collaborations. Perhaps a detailed outline of your research collaboration with UCL colleagues on Preserved! from first contact through achieving funding, co-creating research questions, and on to the end of the project, would be great -- and/or the same for your participation in 100 Objects for example. There are a number of issues you bring up in your proposal that are generally important, but perhaps not so key in this conference context concerning research collaborations. For example, the low profile of university collections is one of the givens that the conference is trying to redress, and may not need to be addressed here. Object-based teaching and learning are also tangential to the conference subject, though key to university museum activities to date. If you think that these adjustments would work, let me know! We’d be so delighted to have you with us and to learn from your experience. Also, it would be great to have a title for your presentation at this time.

18. Object Lessons and Nature Tables: Research Collaborations Between Historians of Science and University Museums
Paper Proposal from Mark Carnall, Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
With ever increasing pressure for University museums to demonstrate their worth in the lingua franca of universities- teaching and research, university natural history and science museums are uniquely placed to offer novel teaching and research based teaching opportunities to university staff and students outside of their ‘bread and butter’ disciplines.
University natural history museums in particular are potential new ground for social science and humanities research on the collections, histories and cultures. Natural history museums are a core part of the early modern history of material culture but as the sciences become disciplines in their own right, natural history museums and science museums became scientific institutions first and museum spaces second. Their history diverges from art museums and archaeological museums and only now with a remit for broader audiences and users as well as with newer generations of collections managers are they opening up/actively soliciting use, knowledge and skills needed from outside of scientific departments.
Traditionally staffed by researching scientists, interest in specimens has primarily been as points of data or props for display. To varying degrees the objects and institutional histories and research into specimens like models, casts, lantern slides, replicas and interpretation are largely poorly recorded or explored. Because the significance of the collections, with rare exceptions, is unrecognised, these collections remain hidden and unstudied.
This paper looks at categories of science collections which have literally dodged the skip but now are useful collections for research, teaching and study outside of science. At the Grant Museum of Zoology and at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Mark Carnall has been working with academics, students and practicing artists outside of the sciences in using the ‘unusable collections’ which starts with highlighting these specimens in exhibitions, displays and online.
Some examples include celebrating dinosaur toys as part of the Preserved! network at UCL History of Art; putting on a lantern slide performance with linguists; working with digital humanities in tackling the difficult, political and grey areas of science with QRator; trying to break new ground in historical objects studies with a multi-institutional 100 Hours project; videoing an oddly stuffed Bosc monitor zooming around campus on a trolley with historians; working with conservators and model makers to piece together the history of anatomical models through to working with the new(ish) wave of curatorship and gallery degree programmes which often overlook science museums altogether or focus on the theory rather than the practicalities and physicalities of working museums.
Brokering these partnerships between universities and (university) museums can be challenging. There is a very real ‘door step’ issue and many university museums struggle with their visibility across their institution. Additionally there are logistical challenges in terms of winning hearts and minds and getting onto more formal academic programmes as course development and timetabling is often in the hands of lecturers and tutors. Lastly, there is the challenge of reaching out across the traditional silos and making connections with social scientists and humanities students and staff- teaching networks/conferences, requests and even open applications for exhibitions have been far less useful at making contacts than more serendipitous meetings at book launches, wine receptions and academic conferences halfway across the country.
With trends towards improving and rewarding excellent teaching and with the competitive expectation that PhD students will engage with extra-curricular teaching and communication skills there are now more opportunities than ever to develop long lasting relationships that start in the museum and end up as a wider network of academics who are comfortable with working in and with museums.