museum and knowledge politics

The 27th Symposium of the Scientific Instrument Commission will be held at the Museum of Science, University of Lisbon 16-21 September 2008. Topics include ‘Instruments and spaces’ and ‘Instruments, heritage and society’. For more info, see http://chcul.fc.ul.pt/sic2008. Anyone interested in the collection, preservation and display of historical medical science instruments might get something interesting out of this meeting. Unfortunately, […]

Is there a point in making a medical museum like ours part of an ‘internet of things’ — i.e., a global network of miniaturised sensors and radio transmitters attached to physical things, thus connecting the material world to the digital internet? The rapid technological development invites to leaps of museological imagination. RFID-tags and barcodes open up for a seamless connection between museum showcases/storerooms and internet sites. Just a […]

Like many museums around the world, Medical Museion is owned by a university (University of Copenhagen); and like other university museums we are not only a player on the international academic arena but we also constitute a link between the university and the surrounding local and regional community. Our research projects are oriented towards an international audience, but our exhibitions are mainly visited […]

Our otherwise sensitive antennae seem to be prette insensitive right now — or why else did we miss the deadline for the interdisciplinary conference ‘Transforming Museums: Bridging Theory and Practice’ at the University of Washington, Seattle, 15-16 May? Here’s the brief for the meeting — organized by The Museology Student Committee for Professional Development at the University of Washington: Museums […]

Apropos our former discussion about blogs and exhibitions — here’s another way of integrating the two genres: In yesterday’s Material World blog, Haidy Geismar, an anthropologist at New York University, relays the experiences of teaching a class in material culture studies together with Robin Nagle, an anthropologist-in-residence at the New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY). Titled “Making a Museum: Materializing Regimes […]

I’ve just read a call for papers to a workshop in Brussels, 6-7 May 2008, organised by the research project ‘Knowledge Politics and New Converging Technologies: A Social Science Perspective’. The aim of the project –which is funded under EU’s 6th Framework RTD Programme for three years, from April 2006 to March 2009, and is run by a consortium co-ordinated by Nico […]

One of my students wrote to me last week and said she was going to London and that she would take the opportunity to attend the event tomorrow evening arranged at the occasion of the publication of Jim Watson’s new book Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science at the Dana Centre, and also buy a signed copy in […]