Making a University Museum (keynote)
Since 2007, the University of Leeds has been steadily building a Museum for the History of Science, Technology & Medicine (STM) on campus. Beginning with an abandoned education collection, the museum collection has grown to over 20,000 objects, including such highlights as the MONIAC prototype, and the camera which produced the first X-ray photograph of DNA. This has developed, however, without a dedicated museum gallery, and without salaried museum staff. Rather, this has been the result of voluntary efforts from historians, and students, in the University’s Centre for the History of Science. Our aim has been to create displays and events that reach out to people across the campus and the local region, to provide training and learning opportunities for students, and to convince colleagues and visitors of the value of history in understanding STM.
In this paper I will discuss the work of the Museum, and the challenges, and reflect on the approaches we have taken. These include: highlighting not just the universality but also the regionality of STM, particularly the unique and rich medical history of Leeds; celebrating STM not just as intellectual pursuits but as practices, that are the product of a variety of workers and makers; and engaging with identity in STM, and the way these disciplines shape our lives. As a medical historian, I want to show the ideas and activities that have made STM so dominant in our world, and to explain how thinking historically is, perhaps, the best way of understanding our current predicaments. But equally, working within a university and a museum – institutions which have grown apart somewhat, and both face challenging circumstances today – I want to argue that each are important to the development of the other, and that both have important roles to play in modern society.
Mike Finn is a lecturer in history of science, and Director of the Museum of the History of Science, Technology & Medicine, at the University of Leeds in England. His research interests are in the history of psychiatry and neuroscience, and the material history of medicine.