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NatSCA Conference 2026 - Call for Papers

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Thursday, May 14, 2026 - 09:00 to Friday, May 15, 2026 - 17:00
The Ulster Museum in Belfast, Northern Ireland



Collaborating and Connecting with Natural History

The Annual Conference & AGM of the Natural Sciences Collections Association (NatSCA) will be held on Thursday 14th and Friday 15th May 2026 at The Ulster Museum in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

From Field to Cabinet: A guide to all things herbarium

Friday, February 13, 2026 -
10:00 to 17:00
Leeds Discovery Centre, Carlisle Rd, Leeds, LS10 1LB

Discover the fundamentals of herbarium work with our one-day hands-on course. Study how to collect, prepare, mount and incorporate plants into your collection using professional techniques and materials. Gain knowledge of how to clean, maintain and repair historic herbarium specimens. Perfect for beginners, students and non-specialist Natural History curators, this basic course will guide you through the entire process—from curation, maintenance, field collection to creating well-preserved specimens for scientific study and conservation (non-IUCN kind!).

Making a Difference: Showing the Positive Impact of Natural History Collections

On May 8th and 9th 2025, NatSCA hosted 'Making a Difference: Showing the Positive Impact of Natural History Collections', the 2025 NatSCA Conference at the Manchester Museum.

This conference was recorded and can be viewed online on our YouTube channel. [External Link]

The description of each YouTube video contains the abstract for the talk.

Conference Programme

Conference Abstracts

Day 1 - May 8th 2025

Welcome

Welcome
Esme Ward and George Young, Manchester Museum, University of Manchester

First Session - Lightning Talks

Opening the doors: presenting natural history collections to the public
Grace Flanagan: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Engaging for impact: how the digitisation team is reaching stakeholders in the margins
Glory Turnbull: Natural History Museum, London

Balancing resources and responsibilities: strategies for curator-led public engagement
Beatriz Vieite: University of Aveiro, Portugal

Cue the Kew internship
Clare Drinkell: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Making an exhibition of ourselves: displaying and not displaying human remains in the Grant Museum
Hannah Cornish: Grant Museum of Zoology, University College London

Bringing digital collections to the social media masses: 80 million specimens, with at least as many stories
Skye Neal: Natural History Museum, London

Utilising plant traits from herbarium collections and species descriptions to enhance conservation efforts in southeast Asia's biodiversity hotspots.
Alison Moore: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

A time capsule of extinction: Scottish wildlife in taxidermy
Caitlin Jamison: Montrose Museum, Scotland

Second Session - Education & Accessibility

Addressing accessibility: ideas for inclusive natural history displays
Anna Massignan: National Museum of Ireland – Natural History

Nature needs everyone’s help, and the Real World Science network are working together to help it thrive!
Fareeda Atwan: Natural History Museum, London

A new museum display for the blind: does it make a difference?
Claire Smith, Amanda Callaghan, Caitlin Walton, and Emma Dunford: Cole Museum of Zoology, University of Reading

Third Session - Colonial Legacies

The colonial legacies of natural history collections: specimens from the Caribbean as a case study
Patricia Torres-Pineda: Museo de Historia Natural "Eugenio de Jesús Marcano" & University of Michigan Museum of Zoology

Hidden hands in colonial natural histories: lessons from four case studies at McGill
Anna Winterbottom & Victoria Dickenson: McGill University, Montreal, Quebec

“Altering the face of nature”: connecting Liverpool’s natural history, heritage and institutions
Deana Heath: University of Liverpool

A visitor intrudes and decolonises natural history: a not so scientific perspective?
Su Liu: University of Sheffield

Fourth Session - Discussion Panel

Indigenous Perspectives on Natural Sciences at Manchester Museum
Dr Alexandra Alberda and Georgina Young, Manchester Museum

Day 2 - May 9th 2025

First Session - Collaboration, Digitisation, & Sustainability

Ways to skin a (large) cat: re-establishing relationships between live and dead collections
Emma Murphy: National Museum of Ireland – Natural History

The hosted portal of the Arctic University Museum of Norway, an example of how to provide open access to natural history collections
Vanessa Pitusi & Andreas Altenburger: The Arctic University Museum of Norway

DiSSCo UK – unlocking impact from the UK’s natural science collections
Helen Hardy (NHM), Vincent Smith (NHM), Laurence Livermore (NHM), Sally Jennings (NHM), Tao Tao Chang (AHRC), & David Selway (AHRC): The Natural History Museum London and the Arts & Humanities Research Council

KISS* at the Dead Zoo [*keep it simple & sustainable]
Paolo
Viscardi & Aoife Hurley: National Museum of Ireland – Natural History

Second Session - Repatriation

Kākāpō, Kiwi and Tūī fly home: Colchester Museums’ repatriation of culturally significant bird specimens to Aotearoa New Zealand
Sophie Stevens & Ricky-Lee Erickson: Colchester Museums and Tāmaki Paenga Hira, Auckland War Memorial Museum

A restitutive commitment to community and to the natural environment through storying with natural history collections
Pauline Rutter: Independent Academic & Archival Artist

Natural history repatriations: how and why to do it
Mike G. Rutherford: The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

Third Session - Stories our Collections Tell

Women of the Riverflies: researching under-represented female naturalists and collectors in the NHMUK’s Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera collections: enriching party data in the museum’s collection management system and increasing women’s public profiles by creating Wikipedia biographies
Louise Berridge: Natural History Museum, London

Nature’s memory: how natural history collections help save
the world
Jack Ashby: University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge

Reimagining the collections of Thomas Pennant at the Natural History Museum
Stephanie Holt: Natural History Museum (Curious Travellers Project), London

Trials and Triumphs: sharing practice across the museum sector

On April 18th and 19th 2024, NatSCA hosted 'Trials and Triumphs: sharing practice across the museum sector', the 2024 NatSCA Conference at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

This conference was recorded and can be viewed online on our YouTube channel. [External Link]

The description of each YouTube video contains the abstract for the talk.

Conference Programme

Conference Abstracts

Day 1 - April 18th 2024

First Session - Lightning Talks

Importance of natural sciences collections for biocultural research. A view from the Global South
Mariana Mondini, Florencia Agliano, M. Florencia Arias, A. Carolina Moreano, Mónica V. Pia, Daiana Coll, Camila Neveu Collado: Laboratorio de Zooarqueología y Tafonomía de Zonas Áridas (LaZTA), IDACOR, CONICET-UNC, Argentina

Imaging amber: Creating a novel workflow to digitise Natural History Museum’s amber collection
Joseph Deane: Natural History Museum, London

Suspicious specimens: a new tool to find misidentified and misnamed specimens
Sophie Roberts: Edge Hill University

The Herbarium Handbook: Collecting knowledge and expertise from around the world
Grace Flanagan: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Mining the Gaps: Geographical biases and colonial history in the Natural History Museum, London
Noah Hearne: Natural History Museum, London

Making friends and influencing people how to work together effectively
Sebastien Lherondel-Davies and Kanchi Mehta; Swansea University, partnered with Swansea Museum and Amgueddfa Cymru (Museum Wales)

Against all Oddys – Where have all the oddy testers gone?
Amalia Lempriere, Sebastian Foxley: Royal College of Surgeons of England

Bryozoans on the move...
Abbie Herdman: Natural History Museum, London

Maximising student engagement through non major interns
Patti Wood Finkle: The Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum & Art Gallery at The Pennsylvania State University

Second Session - Learning and Engagement

Biodiversity: Inspiring teachers and KS5 students
Kathy Moore & David Waterhouse: Freelance and Scott Polar Research Institute (recently of Norfolk Museums Service)

Dead Inspiring: how to encourage secondary schools to engage with natural science collections
Clare Brown: Leeds Museums and Galleries

Discover our dioramas
Su Hepburn & Rebecca Lean: Brighton & Hove Museums / Booth Museum of Natural History

Third Session - Collections Moves

Dust in the wind: how to design exhibits with an eye for upkeep
Becky Desjardins: Naturalis Biodiversity Center

30,000 Fossils in 8 Days: From Mammoth Move to CMS Integration – Lessons for Museum Acquisitions
Spyridoula Pappa: Natural History Museum, London

Behind the Glass: Practical Lessons from Diorama Deinstallation
Anastasia van Gaver: Natural History Museum of Denmark

Fourth Session - Trials and Triumphs: gallery redisplay projects from across the museum
sector

Life, As We Know It: Redisplaying Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Mark Carnall: Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Making a Green Gallery: sustainable exhibition design
Sara Merritt: Leeds Museums & Galleries

True to form: Redevelopment at UCL, Grant Museum of Zoology
Tannis Davidson, UCL Head of Science and Zoology Collections

Day 2 - April 19th 2024

First Session - Sharing museum practices

Surprising Steedman’s Successes (and a disappointing disaster)
Claire Smith: Cole Museum of Zoology, University of Reading

From microfossils to mammoths and everything in between – how do you measure 28 million specimens?
Katherine Hudson & Ellie Clark: Natural History Museum, London

Oh crumbs! Responding to a biscuit beetle infestation within the Economic Botany Collection at Kew
Gayathri Anand and Erin Messenger: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Second Session - Decolonial practice and digital repatriation

Perspectives from an African museum: colonial legacies and the potential of thematic approaches
Charlotte Wood: University of Cambridge

Cetacean (re)sources at the Natural History Museum, London
Sophia Nicolov and Richard Sabin: Natural History Museum, London

SIGNIFY – recollecting Singapore’s historically biodiversity digitally
Lydia Gan Xinjie: Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, National University of Singapore

Third Session - Digitisation and data management

DiSSCo UK: Unlocking the potential of UK Natural Science Collections through digitisation
Helen Hardy: Natural History Museum, London

Kew in the Digital Age
Magda Steele: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

You've got what in your collection? (or, a practical overview of the Latimer Core data standard)
Laurence Livermore: Natural History Museum, London

Natural History Museum to lead new national programme to digitise the UK’s natural science collections

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Funding of £155 million for a 10-year programme has been announced by the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology as part of the UKRI Infrastructure Fund. The programme will digitise collections; applying AI tools and related technologies to create vast data sets and unlock the impact of collections data in supporting research and collaboration on critical issues including the environmental emergency.

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