teaching

Do term papers have to be written with pen and paper? No, luckily not anymore. Is it necessary to hand in a printed version of your exam paper? No, universities (at least in Denmark) now let you submit online. Would most people use programmes like Word etc for writing their assignments? Probably yes. But how […]

I’ve just watched, with great fascination, a series of short movies produced at the Fondazione Scienza e Tecnica in Firenze to illustrate classical physics experiments with original 19th century apparatus. Like this one: (There are many others here.) Let me say first — I do not, by any means, doubt the serious intentions behind this series of didactical movies. They are produced by Paolo […]

We have just submitted an application for a major new gallery based on our anatomical and pathological specimen collections — and the in-house discussions are already becoming vigorous. How to find conceptually interesting ways to display cancer tumours, conjoined twins, and twisted torsos? What’s the balance between spectacular engagement and ethical concerns? How to make the historical collections […]

Of course you can, but few history teachers actually take the opportunity. Museum collections remain a remarkably underutilised resource in academic history teaching. And the history of science, technology and medicine is no exception. Here at Medical Museion we have occasionally brought material objects into our medical history courses and also into the course we’re giving on medical science […]

Another theme at the “Contemporary medical science and technology as a challenge to museums”-conference was ‘investigating museum visitors’. Can visitors’ experiences help us make our museums better? Should an exhibition be guided by what the curator is passionate about or by what she thinks the visitor might find interesting? Or should we simply ask visitors to […]

Science Museum have just aired their new history of medicine website, Brought to Life. Intended for students and educators, it shows some 2,500 newly-made images of objects from the museum’s history of medicine collection together with historical interpretations, interactives and thematic introductions. The plan is to let it grow to 4000 images over the next year. Hopefully we’ll be […]

Historians of medicine are grudgingly beginning to acknowledge the changing media habits in the population — that is, why read a book or a journal article when you can see a streaming video on the web instead? To prepare the scholarly community for the new media age, the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL is organizing a workshop on ‘History of […]

Except for a 2,5 ECTS credit course in medical science and technology studies, we don’t have any obligatory teaching here at Medical Museion. But we attract several medical students who want to use their 5th/6th year elective essay (10 ECTS credits) to go deeper into the history of medicine and medical humanities. Here’s Jesper discussing the history […]

We are right now teaching a course in medical science and technology studies here at Medical Museion and we are using medical historical museum objects. It’s the first time we do so, and we’ve talked about that it would be great to expand this — and to learn more about how others have used artefacts in similar […]

I’ve always been skeptical of claims to revolutions in science and technology. Thomas Kuhn actually made a great disservice to historical awareness among scientists and to science communication with his 1962 bestseller The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Every now and then a new finding is described as a ‘revolution’ in science, technology or medicine — despite the fact […]

As a university museum, we are constantly thinking about how to use our huge collection of medical artefacts (est. 150.000-200.00 items) for research and teaching purposes. I mean, using artefacts in exhibitions is not that problematic. Find them on the shelves, dust them off, and put them in some kind of orderly display, that’s it. Well, it’s a […]

The recently founded Nordic Network of Medical History (chaired by Astri Andresen in Bergen) is organising a three-day postgrad course on “Power, policies and health” (3 ects points), 11-14 May 2009, at the University of Copenhagen. The aim is to present some theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of power and policies in the field of health, […]