seminars

Just saw the early spring Monday seminar program at UCL’s STS department. I like the nice British analytical touch to it. Much more interesting than the usual fashionable Latouresque ANTsemiotics and other STS’ese sociolects. For example: Jeremy Howick, ‘When can we trust the experts? Defending the Evidence Based Medicine stance’, 25 January David Healy, ‘They used to […]

We are of course not the only museum that struggles with how to juggle art, science, materiality and medicine in our exhibitions. Next Friday, 4 December, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at University of Cambridge is organising a most interesting afternoon symposium titled ‘Assembling Bodies: Art, Science & Imagination’. Curators and artistic contributors to MAA’s […]

Nina Simon, best known for her awesome museum 2.0 blog, is visiting Medical Museion tomorrow to give a lunch seminar on her ideas on the participatory museum. Her visit fits very well into our current plans for engaging both the health sector and the public in re-organising the collections and permanent exhibitions — more about […]

Just to let you know, on 12 May art historian Robert Zwijnenberg is giving a talk at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Berlin about “How to Depict Life. A Short History of the Imagination of Human Interiority”. Here is the exciting abstract: From 14th-century pictorial efforts to the images produced by visualization technologies, such […]

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 […]

Jens Hauser has just written to tell us that SymbioticA’s next Biotech Art workshop takes place in Stavanger, 18-21 November 2008 (part of the Stavanger ARTICLE BIENNALE 15-30 November. The workshop will accommodate 15 participants to learn techniques of microbiology, DNA extraction, genetic transformation of bacteria, gel electrophoresis, tissue culture and embryo rescue. More here.

Last week, ten representatives of the major medical historical collections and museums in the Nordic and Baltic countries — i.e., Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden — gathered for a two-day meeting in Uppsala, Sweden, with three aims in mind: to create a network between individuals and institutions in the Baltic-Nordic region about the development of medical and medical history […]

We all know how babies can be conceived in test-tubes, that we can clone eggs in petri dishes, and that embryos can be stored in the freezer. Old-fashioned sex is increasingly substituted with artificial conception. But what does a leading bio-artist and art historian think of all this? Suzanne Anker from the School of Visual Arts, NYC, gives a seminar in Cambridge on Tuesday (HPS […]

The emergence of evidence-based medicine is one of the most interesting issues in the history of contemporary medical history. Wish I were in Stockholm on Monday 3 November when Ingemar Bohlin from the STS Section at the University of Gothenburg will speak about evidence-based decision making in a science-based society and the origin, distribution and limits of the ‘evidence […]

The Art|Sci Center at University of California, Los Angeles, organizes a ‘Body Art Disease’-symposium on 6 November, featuring presentations, exhibitions, installations, roundtables, social gatherings, curated talk, and tours in the vaults of UCLA’s Special Collections. Participants include a number of interesting and creative people: Philip Beesley (University of Waterloo), Jill Scott (The Neurobiological Lab at the Institute of Zoology, […]

MR-neuroimaging and other methods for studying brain function have been used for some time now to provide criminal defence evidence in courtrooms, at least in the US. But how does neurowiring relate to classical judicial concepts like ‘intent’ and ‘responsiblity’? Can neuroscience offer excuses for criminal activity? The Triple Helix Cambridge (www.camtriplehelix.com) organizes a debate about […]

A recent announcement for a lecture by Tim Hunt, joint winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, at the Royal Institution of Great Britain tomorrow, Thursday 9 October, reminded me of the problems with using scientists as sources for biographical stories. Tim Hunt will be talking about the inspirations behind his life in science. Says the announcement: […]