Biomedicine on Display

I’m live-tweeting from the Artefacts meeting in Leiden: see here.
See meeting programme here.
See abstracts here.
You can also follow #medicalmuseion and #af11.

I have just had a paper accepted for a very interesting symposium called Representing the Contentious, organized in London 14 October by Bronwyn Parry, Ania Dabrowska and Wellcome Trust People Award.

My presentation contains many images from my PhD Delineating Disease: a system for investigating Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva that were not presented to the public for reasons I will discuss.

Drawing hidden truths

How do you show disease in a way that reveals new insights, is clear, informative, is understandable to members of the public as well as to medical experts, and yet remains respectful to the subject? And what if this research is also set within the context of the medical museum where processes of preparation and display must also be considered?

In an artistic research PhD, a system using drawing as a valid research methodology to investigate a rare disease was developed. It presented a breadth of experiences of a disease called FOP and also revealed the disease within the context of museum conservation and display. The activity of drawing was shown to both initiate the act of looking and evidence the journey of understanding taken during this process. It involved actually spending time in the presence of people and objects, and forming relationships. This commitment maintained dignity and respect for people and objects, and the drawings were seen to be informative and sensitive. Drawing was used not merely to record, but as a participatory activity. Evidence showed the research revealed new insights, confirmed medical opinions about the progression of the disease and presented a far greater breadth of experiences of FOP than previously seen.

But the impact of this research also had unexpected consequences. Certain drawings were not included in the exhibition that formed part of the final research exposition, as they were deemed unsuitable. Medical experts were ‘shocked’ by drawings presenting the methods involved in preparation of donors with the disease. These processes integral to the research, hidden behind the scenes of the museum, were not what the experts had expected to see.

But the greatest impact was on the people with FOP. I was completely unprepared for their reactions when they saw drawings of the disease. Their responses to being drawn were positive. They appreciated someone looking at them without staring, spending time with them, bothering to see them. Despite having seen their own X-rays, CT scans and read medical books, when they saw other drawings of FOP they were shocked. Unlike medical imaging, which requires training and experience to ‘read’, they ‘understood’ the drawings and felt their clarity revealed the hidden, terrible truth. They acted like a mirror. Conversely, they also felt it was vital the research was shown to make people aware of this rare disease.  The responsibility of this is something that has weighed heavily on me. Despite the research being seen to be valid, insightful and useful, it also had unseen consequences. What form of exposition should these contentious elements take, should they be shown at all?

I would like to announce the programme for the forthcoming workshop on 29th and 30th September.

I have been overwhelmed by the amount of interest this workshop has generated as it grew from an idea to have a small informal seminar where the object is understood sensuously and placed as central to research, to become a two day international workshop. It is now more like a full time collaborative project working with all the presenters and their ideas, and an opportunity for objects in the collections at Medical Museion to be used in new ways.

Presenters come from research fields as diverse as design and technology, history of medicine, architecture, anthropology and choreography, and geographically span Denmark, Italy, Austria, England, Scotland, Sweden, United States, Egypt and United Arab Emirates.

The event is full and a reserve list for participants still wishing to come is growing longer. With the diversity of presenters and presentation formats, I think it will prove to be an interesting two days.

Programme:

THE SENSUOUS OBJECT WORKSHOP: how we experience material objects through our senses

THURSDAY 29^TH SEPTEMBER

09:00 Coffee and registration

09:30 Welcome – Lucy Lyons

09:40 Mats Fridlund – Security in a Box: Recovering Material and Discursive Phenomenologies of Forgotten Hopes and Fears

10:15 Secil Ugur – Tactile and visual perception on wearable technology

10:35 Discussion

11.05 – 11.35 COFFEE

11:35 Jan-Eric Olsén – Outlines of touch in the history of blindness collection

12:05 Discussion

12.25 – 1.25 LUNCH

1:25 James Edmonson – Making sense of sound: the early stethoscope and the physical examination

1:45 Linda Thomson – Can object handling make you healthy?

2:05 Discussion

2.25 – 2.55 COFFEE

2:55 Laura Gonzalez – The material sensuousness of a hysteric’s performance

3:25 Discussion

3:50 Bernd Kraeftner – Who cares?

4:10 Jennifer Nomura van der Grinten – From Face to Clitoris

4:30 Discussion

5.00 – 6.00 DRINKS RECEPTION

During the reception “Video Lab”, a short film by Astrid Møller-Olsen will be shown

FRIDAY 30^TH SEPTEMBER

09:00 Ansa Lønstrup – Mediate Auscultation: listening to the “voices” of the human and other bodies through the stethoscope and through percussion.

09:30 Discussion

09:55 Eduardo Abrantes – A voice as a sound object?

10:15 Brian Dougan – A sensuous reciprocity

10:35 Discussion

10:55 – 11:20 COFFEE

11:20 Per Roar – performance – This is my body 2     (In Reception room)

11:50 Discussion

12:05 Carsten Friberg – Body and Space

12:35 Discussion

12:55 – 1:40 LUNCH

1:40 Marlene Little –Tacit encounter: Materiality and the sensuous object

2:00 Louise Whiteley – Scan, scanner, scanned                 (In X-ray room)

2:20 Discussion

2.40 – 3.00 COFFEE

3:00 Anette Stenslund – Abra-Cadaver: Aseptic (un)covering of life and death

3:30 Discussion

3:55 Anne Krefting – Smell and Narration: Objects as a performative structure

4:15 Jenny Carlson – Sensuous slurry

4:35 Discussion

CLOSE

Apropos the forthcoming Birkbeck workshop on pain without lesions I referred to a couple of days ago — the way the workshop is organised is quite interesting, because it reminds me of the discussion we had on this blog a few months ago about promoting best practice in organising academic meetings.

The organisers of the planned pain workshop at Birkbeck seem to have learned from their medical humanities colleagues at King’s — speakers are required to provide drafts of their papers in advance and they will not have traditional paper panels; instead speakers will be asked to present as “a conversant in tandem with another speaker on a unified theme, after which a chaired group discussion will proceed for the majority of the time allotted for the session”.

Conference and workshop formats are up for serious revisions now that we are used to social media. Sooner or later physical meeting formats will have to learn from the experiences on the web. It seems to be a long way to go, however. Spread the word and let us here at Biomedicine on Display know if you have found other ways of doing it.

As you can see if you scroll down a bit (or search for ‘anatomy’/'anatomical’ in the search field), we have written quite a lot about different activities, both in Europe and elsewhere, around the topic of anatomical collections.

The next initiative on this central topic for medical museums is a conference titled ‘Cultures of Anatomical Collections’ to be held at Universiteit te Leiden, 15-18 February 2012. The aim is to explore anatomical preparations and collections and anatomical models (e.g., moulages) as parts of the cultural heritage — asking questions like

• What do the technical details of anatomical preparations tell us about the ideas of their makers?
• How do ideas on beauty and perfection shape anatomical preparations?
• How have anatomical preparations been handled and used for teaching purposes?
• How have the interest of non-medical audiences shaped anatomical preparations and collections?
• How have particular anatomical collections been built up?
• How have curatorial decisions affected the build-up of collections
• How does the housing of a collection affect its outlook and popularity?

Deadline for proposals is already next week — 16 September!!  The organiser, Rina Knoeff (r.knoeff@hum.leidenuniv.nl) is prepared to extend the deadline with a week or so if you let her know if they intend to submit an abstract. For more general info, see here.

The 16th biannual conference of the European Association of Museums of the History of Medical Sciences (EAMHMS) will be held in Berlin, 13-15 September 2012 on the theme “Hidden Stories: What do medical objects tell and how can we make them speak?”.

Here’s the call for papers from Thomas Schnalke, director of the Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum:

Dear friends and colleagues!

After a highly inspiring conference of the European Association of Museums of the History of Medical Sciences (EAMHMS) in Copenhagen in 2010, it is my pleasure to invite the members of the association, as well as interested scholars and curators from the community of medical history collections and museums to join in and actively participate in the next meeting of the organisation. The conference will be held at the Berlin Museum of Medical History at the Charité from 13 to 15 September 2012. As we all profited from the vibrant culture of debate and discussion, Thomas Söderqvist and his team had generated in Copenhagen, we would like to keep the idea of pre-circulating extended abstracts plus a short oral presentation of the core ideas in the conference (10 mins!). Beamer and laptop will be provided for Power-Point-Presentations. The language for abstracts, talks, and discussions will be English.

While the Copenhagen conference opened and fuelled the still ongoing debate on how to collect and present medical and medical history issues in times when objects tend to fade into the invisible and intangible cosmos of the virtual and nano biology, we want to address the attention back to the physical things we have and deal with: the objects in our collections, depots, and museums. These items are a mystery. They present strangely curved and shiny surfaces. They perform in all different shapes, materials and colours. And they are quiet. They usually don’t talk. But, and this is our chance and challenge, ideas and concepts had been inscribed into their physical make. Medical theories and practices as intricately mixed epistemic processes had found their specific materialisations in the defined structures of such things. Over the times of their preservation they might have lost their primary functions, won secondary ones, but more crucial: They have gained meaning for which we can seek, if we decide to take these objects as serious sources for our work as historians of medicine, science, technology, culture, art, humanities etc.

What we have to do is asking for the “text” in the object, i.e. sometimes a real text in, with or around the thing (may this be only a code, a chiffre or a number), or a “subtext” somehow embedded in the shaped materials implicitly or connected with the object but detached from it and stored elsewhere, as in added files, fascicles or publications. With the clues and information we get from there we can move on to reconstruct the object’s context. Only within this context, the object begins to speak. We can tell its story and biography.

The conference will therefore focus on objects, asking always for the hidden “texts” and “subtexts” on two different paths—a more practical and a conceptual one:

1. Hidden stories. What do medical objects tell?
We ask for papers that really focus on one medical object from your collections, depots or show rooms. Please slip into the role of a Sherlock Holmes to solve the case of this very object, i.e. by observing and describing the thing accurately, looking for clues (“texts”) and additional information (“subtexts”) and presenting your spiral analysis and interpretation around the item, thus telling us the full object story. You may chose any medical object of your personal interest—an ancient mask, medieval blood letting device, a scientific kymograph or a modern gene sequencer—from any time, culture and geographical zone. The only aim we ask you to keep in mind is to show us how far you get with your object-centred research, how far you can draw your interpretation surely consulting secondary archival material and relevant literature. Please also reflect on the limits of this approach.

2. How can we make our objects speak?
Here we ask for papers that reflect on a more conceptual base on how we can deal with objects in three different arenas:
- Research: Medical objects and collections form a unique source in performing research on various topics in the history of medicine and the sciences. What prerequisites and infrastructures do we need to study our objects effectively? What are innovative modes and approaches in a material culture of performing research on, with and around our objects? What forms of networking and funding do we need to support an object-centred research? What are adequate and new formats of publication for our object studies?
- Teaching: Medical Objects and collections offer a unique chance for visual and haptic forms of teaching in many fields. Can you share your thoughts and experiences on this field with us? What are the features, values, and potentials of an object-based teaching? What are possible limits here (delicacy of objects, climate, access, etc.)? What formats of object-based teaching have been tried out (best practice) or ought to be developed further towards a better training in the medical (historical) fields? What links of object-based teaching to research and public outreach have been built up and tried out with what results?
- Presenting: Medical Objects and collections form the core items for our exhibits. What do we want to achieve with our object presentations? What is the very nature, what are the features of exhibitions in our fields? Whom do we want to reach? What are good and innovative formats to make our objects speak and perform for a wider public in our showrooms? What connections with the arenas of research and teaching are possible and sensible? What is the status of an object-based thematic exhibition in our own eyes, in the minds of our external audiences, including the general public and the scientific community?

We ask you to choose a topic from the above-mentioned issues and send your abstract (maximum 700 characters) with a title, your name, the name of your institution (if you are attached to any) and your contact data (preferably e-mail address) until 31 October 2011 to thomas.schnalke@charite.de. A programme committee will select from the abstracts to compose a hopefully inspiring programme. If your contribution was chosen, you will be asked to work out and hand in an extended abstract (2 to 5 pages) until 15 May 2012. All papers will be put together in one pdf-file and sent out to all participants in time before the conference starts in Berlin on 13 September 2011. We will ask the participants to have read the papers, so that a short presentation (10 mins!) will be enough to focus on the core arguments.

Please help us to put together an inspiring conference. See you all in Berlin 2012.

Best wishes

Thomas Schnalke

It’s notoriously difficult to display invisibles in medical exhibitions. And what’s more invisible than pain? When you break a leg, the lesion is visible, but the pain is not. A mostly subjective sensation, chronic pain has few, if any, visible physical correlates. How do you display headache?

I came to think about this when I heard about the Birkbeck Pain Project, which invites contributions to a workshop organised by Daniel S. Goldberg, titled “The History of Pain Without Lesion in the Mid-to-Late 19th Century West”. The workshop will deal with the social, cultural, and medical status of what we might now refer to as chronic pain sufferers, including labels and complaints, like neuralgia, neurasthenia, hysteria, railway spine, spinal irritation, spinal concussion, headache, dysmenorrhea, and pain without lesion.

Read more here. If you consider attending, send up to 450 words submissions + cv to painproject@bbk.ac.uk, not later than 30 November, or contact the organiser directly, goldbergd@ecu.edu.

Eventually, the final program for the annual Artefacts meeting (this year in Leiden), has just been sent out. Three of us here at Medical Museion (Louise Whiteley, Niels Vilstrup and myself) are going — here are Louise’s and my abstracts:

Louise Whiteley: Preserving the material culture of functional neuroimaging: Objects of process
Functional neuroimaging research aims to reveal the physical basis of the mind. Since the late 1980s, functional neuroimaging has been a prominent player in contemporary neuroscience, and its strong public profile and invocation in policy contexts also argue for the importance of preserving and engaging with its material culture. Yet brain scanners are not natural museum objects; huge, heavy, and expensive, their most salient sensory qualities derive from the operation of a giant magnet cooled by helium gas and encased in a shielded room. Here I argue that attending to the trajectory from experiment design to data presentation offers us an array of new objects to consider, and new possibilities for engagement with this potent technology. I discuss the collection of computer tasks designed to recreate phenomena such as love or religious experience in the scanner; of objects such as vats of earplugs, restraining cages, and stimulus delivery devices; and of brain scans considered as contingent endpoints of fluid, computational analysis. Finally, I consider how distributed curation of such ‘objects of process’ could bring into productive interaction the interests of neuroscientists, visitors, and a developing critical discourse about the social implications of neuroimaging that is already challenging boundaries of expertise.

Louise Whiteley is an Assistant Professor at Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen. She has a PhD in Neuroscience and MSc in Science Communication, co-directed the Wellcome Trust funded public engagement project Interior Traces, and recently completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Neuroethics. She is interested in using qualitative research to both study and shape public engagement with the social, ethical, and philosophical ‘implications’ of contemporary biomedical science.

Thomas Soderqvist: COLLECTION IMPOSSIBLE: Distributed curatorship and crowd-sourcing as alternatives to centralised collecting
Centralised collecting of the artefacts from contemporary science, technology and medical (STM) visual and material culture seems to have rather bleak prospects. The looming financial and social global crisis is not conducive to centralized efforts by big museums to save the contemporary STM heritage, not least because the modern state-subsidised museum institution is running out of funding (at least in the West). What can curators then do to uphold their professional obligation to rescue the contemporary STM heritage for future generations? In this paper I will discuss two alternative collecting strategies: distributed curatorship and crowd-sourcing. I suggest that the major aim of STM museum acquisition curators should rather be to raise the general awareness among scientists and the engineering and medical professions of the importance of preserving ‘their’ artefacts (heritagemindedness). Drawing on a historical analogy (biological standardisation in the 1950s), I also suggest that this aim might be achieved best by working out guidelines for the collection, preservation and curation of artefacts to be distributed to individual scientists, doctors and engineers in research institutions and private companies, and to interested members of the public. Presently, social media is probably the best vehicle for producing such guidelines and spreading them widely.

Thomas Soderqvist is professor in the history of medicine and Director of Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen. His research specialty is the history and historical methodology of 20th century life sciences and medicine (e.g., The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology, co-ed, 2007), and he has also written about the problems of collecting and displaying contemporary medical science and technology.

Here’s my abstract for a panel on the role of the humanities in science communication that Joan Leach in the Science Communication programme, U Queensland, is putting together for the PCST-12 meeting in Florence next spring:

Mundane Design vs. Fine Sci-Art: Two Realms of Aesthetic Practice in Science Communication
Sci-art has become an increasingly important dimension of science communication through printed media, museums, science centers and the web. Ranging from beautiful images on scientific journal covers to tissue-engineered wet-art installations, sci-art has become a recognised subgenre of the contemporary fine arts; it has entered art schools and caught the interest of gallery owners and art reviewers. It has also drawn the attention of major funding agencies, like the Wellcome Trust, as a means for strengthening public engagement with science. However, the popularity of fine sci-art risks eclipsing another, and perhaps even more important, realm of aesthetic practice in science and science communication, viz., mundane design (everyday aesthetics). In this presentation, I shall reclaim everyday aesthetics and the sensory qualities of research as a central aspect of science and, as a consequence, of science communication.

The full title of the proposed panel is ‘The Role of Humanities in Science Communication: Axiology, Epistemology, Aesthetics’, which connects nicely to the theme of the conference: ‘quality, honesty and beauty in science and technology communication’. It’s a great theme, very anti-mainstream-STS’ish! Besides me and Joan, Steve Fuller (Warwick) and Alice Bell (Imperial) are taking part. But, you never know if the programme committee likes this kind of approach or not. Let’s see. That said, the deadline for proposals is 30 September, and the final programme will be announced in January 2012.

Sometimes conference announcements only become interesting in the very last sentence. Like this one for “Frenemies: The love-hate relationsship between science and society”, taking place at Universiteit Twente on 14 September.

Science is put in the dock, so it seems. Experts are under attack, there is public agitation on the internet. Yet we cherish expertise as never before, and cite expert sources whenever they suit us. Are we friends, or enemies, or both? [...] This symposium looks at the dynamic role of expertise in our society. How should we understand the notion of expertise? What operates as credible expertise, and when? Is scientific expertise overrated, and are other forms of expertise too easily dismissed? Or is it precisely the other way around?

Seems like any other conference on scientific expertice to me. But then comes the interesting part:

And what, if anything, does this mean for communicating science and technology?

If you plan to attend, send an email to pauline.teppich@utwente.nl with subject REGISTER #FRENEMIES.

I’ve been invited to give a keynote lecture at the 2011 University Museum Conference, which is going to be held 11-12 November at the National Cheng Kung University Museum in Tainan, Taiwan.

Apparently, I’m supposed to speak my mind, so this would be a great opportunity to think through the topic of university museums. But what to say? I’ve browsed all the issues of the University Museums and Collections Journal, but didn’t find anything that really caught my imagination.

Does anyone know a good, provocative, statement about university museums that could work as an appetizer? Any angle is welcomed.

By the way, I’ve never been in Taiwan before; Tainan is supposed to be a rather beautiful city, at least compared to Taipeh.

Next year’s Universeum meeting (the 13th) will take place 14-16 June 2012 at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. An announcement and call for papers will be sent out in November. See further: http://www.universeum.it/meetings.html.

For those who have forgotten it: Universeum is an association for the preservation, study, access and promotion of university collections, museums, archives, libraries, botanical gardens, astronomical observatories, etc.

I am repeatedly thrilled by news of events arranged by the European Neuroscience & Society Network (ENSN). If it does not clash too much with my planned research stay at BIOS in London in September, I will definitely find my way to Groningen for this conference as it fits very nicely with the next part of my ph.d.-project. See the conference description below.

In a museum context, I am also curious to see what kinds of objects the conference will contain. I have been thinking that it is very difficult to make neuroscience tangible, but maybe this will give some clues as to how it might be done. Neurodevices could be seen as very powerful objects in the sense that they literally touch upon (or mess with) the merging of self and materiality. Interesting stuff!

BRAIN GEAR – Discussing the design and use of neurodevices in neurosocieties

University of Groningen, the Netherlands, September 15-16th, 2011
http://www.gmw.rug.nl/~braingear/

European Neuroscience & Society Network; The Theory & History of Psychology Group

Scientists, sociologists of science, philosophers, and artists explore the emergence and implications of new ‘brain gear’ to repair and enhance our emotional and cognitive abilities.

What are the implications of brain-changing instruments that change our individual and collective self-image? Does their rise imply a fundamental change in the meaning of human life and should societies rethink fundamental concepts of justice and responsibility?

Various kinds of braindevices are in the making or already available. Firstly, there are implantable ones such as instruments for deep brain stimulation (DBS), epidural cortical stimulation (EpCS), vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) and on a molecular leven neuronanotubes.

Secondly, there are external devices including apparatus for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) or repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS).

And, thirdly, there are digital tools like ambient intelligence (wireless microprocessors integrated in the body or the environment like clothes and walls), ‘digital drugs’ (audio files giving people a high) or software programs for neurobio-feedback built into computers as well as ‘neury bears’ (teddy bears training children’s brainwaves through sounds).

While many welcome this kind of apparatus as ways to eradicate the woes and inconveniences of human life, others fear they will cause a loss of human dignity and freedom. Do such devices blur old distinctions between ‘human beings’ versus ‘things’ or ‘nature’ versus ‘nurture’? Or were these untenable distinctions anyway? Do they imply fundamental changes because they operate directly on the brain or are they not that different from more traditional means of enhancement like cars, contact lenses, or microphones?

Chemical technologies inducing neurobiological changes are already widely in use. Maybe arguments about psychopharmacological changes of our selves can be directly applied to non-chemical molecular technologies. The analogy brings debates to mind about safety and efficacy, and the regulation of admission to the market. In addition, fundamental issues about individual freedom and responsibility also rise. Will the same social pressures that encourage people to use psychopharmacological drugs from childhood on make them use brain changing apparatus from childhood on? What to think of electric devices to boost children’s learning abilities?

Such debates unavoidably revolve around questions about the nature of responsibility. A number of neuroscientists argue these days that such concepts are superseded notions from the past, since the mind is nothing more than what the brain causes us to do. If so, it would not make a difference if the already material mind is extended with material hardware or software.

If ‘my brain made me do it’ my technologically enhanced brain made me do it no less. Legal philosophers however, argue that neurobiology can never have an impact on our notions of free will and responsibility since such notions do not need a non-material basis. Would that imply that we remain as responsible for our enhanced brain as we are for our non-enhanced brains?

These and related questions will be discussed during the workshop from various perspectives. Each in their own way scientists, sociologists, ethicists and artists will express their views and expectations.

The conference takes place on September 15 and 16 (departure September 17) 2011 in the artists’ center at The Palace in Groningen (www.hetpaleisgroningen.nl). The University of Groningen offers a satellite program on Monday September 12 and a debate on Wednesday September 14 (http://studium.hosting.rug.nl).

Here’s the final (and somewhat extended) call for presentations at the workshop ‘The Sensuous Object to be held at Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen, 29-30 September, 2011

‘The Sensuous Object’ is an interdisciplinary, participatory workshop concerned with ways we actually engage with objects and aimed at researchers in all disciplines interested in the materiality of actual artefacts and ways of understanding objects through the senses (smell and touch, ambience, aesthetic, visual thinking, tacit knowledge, sound and seduction).

1. An actual, material object must be central and a present part of the workshop. This artefact should be or relate in some way to objects found in medical museums.

You are welcome to arrange to choose an object from Medical Museion collections,
or bring your own,
or if you send a photo of an object from another medical museum I can try and find an equivalent here,
or if we can’t find it you can use an image of an object.

2. Engagement is vital; emphasis is on demonstration, experimentation and participation.

3. This is an opportunity for presenters to try out ideas and test new formats in a friendly environment where the starting point for discussion is the object present rather than previous research results.

We anticipate the definition of sensuous and approaches to presenting understanding of materiality of objects to be varied, even experimental!

How we experience and understand objects as sensuous objects that have been realized, produced, consumed through and by our senses, and how they impact on us and how we impact on them, are just a few of the expected discussion topics. By inviting participants to choose actual objects and use them as central to their presentations, the aim is to challenge established concepts and reveal new possibilities in our experiencing of and understanding through objects, using sensuous approaches. It will provide opportunity for presenters to test ideas, try out new formats of presentation and discussion, and examine their own research through the sensuous object.

The idea for this workshop began as a way to research objects from Medical Museion’s collections and for the objects themselves to form the basis of further research. Medical Museion is a university museum at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen, with an extensive collection of historical medical objects from the 18th through 20th centuries and with internationally award-winning exhibitions. Its field is the history of health and disease in a cultural perspective, with a focus on the material and iconographic culture of recent biomedicine. Research at Medical Museion is seen as essential to underpinning university teaching strategies for collection and conservation of medical heritage, exhibition making, and other material-based communication practices.

Speakers are invited to present their understanding of an object in terms of their methodological approaches and areas of research. Research areas of confirmed participants include senses of smell and touch, ambience, aesthetic, visual thinking, tacit knowledge, sound, and seduction.

Confirmed speakers:
Laura Gonzalez (Glasgow School of Art)
Ansa Lonstrup (University of Aarhus)
Anette Stenslund (Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen)
Jan-Eric Olsén (Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen)
Carsten Friberg (Aarhus School of Architecture)
Mats Fridlund (University of Gothenburg)

Organisers:
Postdoc Lucy Lyons (lucyly@sund.ku.dk) and PhD student Anette Stenslund (astenslund@sund.ku.dk), Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen, 18 Fredericiagade, Copenhagen (www.museion.ku.dk).

More information:
If you are interested in presenting, please email a 200 word abstract by 15 JULY. If you would like to participate but do not wish to present, please email a paragraph about your area of research by 5 September. Contact: lucyly@sund.ku.dk.

‘The Sensuous Object’ workshop is free and Medical Museion will provide tea and coffee breaks and host lunch on both days and a drinks reception on 29 September. Participants will need to arrange and pay for their own travel and accommodation.

Many medical (history) museums are attached to universities, so if you’re interested in our kind of museums, you might want to attend the 11th annual conference of University Collections and Museums (UMAC) at the Museum of Science of the University of Lisbon, 21-25 September. See preliminary programme here.