Event Date: 9 – 10 May 2019
Royal Botanic Gardens,
Kew
Richmond TW9 3AB

The Royal Holloway University of London Department of Geography in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew present:

Collections in Circulation Conference

The conference brings together scholars from the UK and overseas with a shared interest in the mobility of museum collections, past and present. Their papers will address various aspects of the history of the circulation of objects and their re-mobilisation in the context of object exchange, educational projects and community engagement.

Conference Programme

Thursday 9th May

Session I: Welcome & First Keynote session

Welcome – Felix Driver

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Caroline Cornish & Felix Driver (Royal Holloway), Mark Nesbitt (RBG Kew) – The mobile museum: economic botany in circulation
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Session II: Mobilising museum objects (chair: Joshua Bell)

Luciana Martins (Birkbeck, University of London) – Plant artefacts then and now: reconnecting biocultural collections in Amazonia

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Paul Basu (SOAS) –  Re-mobilising colonial collections in decolonial times: exploring the latent possibilities of N.W. Thomas’ West African collections
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Tony Kanellos (Adelaide Botanic Garden) – Displaying economic botany in the Santos Museum

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Session III: Collections in circulation (chair: Caroline Cornish)

Daniel Simpson (Royal Holloway, University of London) –  Circulating the national museum: naval collecting and curatorial authority, 1827-1855

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Catherine Nichols (Loyola University Chicago) –  Illustrating anthropological knowledge: the exchange & use of duplicate specimens at the US National Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum
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Session IV: Second Keynote session

Chair: Felix Driver
Introduction by Felix Driver

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Joshua Bell (Smithsonian Institution, Washington) – Circuits of accumulation and loss: intersecting natural histories of the 1928 USDA New Guinea Sugarcane Expedition’s collections
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Friday 10th May
Session V: Learning from objects: museum and classroom (chair: Anne Secord)

Sally Gregory Kohlstedt (University of Minnesota) –  Mobile botany: education, horticulture and commerce in New York City, 1890 to 1930s

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Laura Newman (Royal Holloway, University of London) – Mobilising the school museum: Kew museums, plants and the London classroom, c.1880-1940
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Session VI: Specimens in circulation (chair: Clive Gamble)

Jude Philp (University of Sydney) –  Circulations of paradise or How to use a specimen to best personal advantage

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Alice Stevenson (UCL) –  Circulation as negotiation and loss: Britain’s role in distributing archaeological finds from Egypt, 1880–present
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Session VII: Re-mobilising heritage (chair: Gaye Sculthorpe)

Claudia Augustat (Vienna) – Colonising memory: Indigenous heritage and community engagement

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Karen Jacobs and Steven Hooper (UEA) – Re-mobilisation of Material Culture in Papua New Guinea
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Hooper:
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Session VIII: Discussion and closing remarks

Chair: Felix Driver
Discussant: Martha Fleming (British Museum) – What goes around, comes around: mobility’s modernity;
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