The UNIVERSEUM Working Group on Recent Heritage of Science organises a workshop on Uses and Audiences for the Heritage of Contemporary Science on Friday 15 June 2018, 10:00-13:00. The workshop is part of the UNIVERSEUM Network Meeting at The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, 13 - 15 June 2018.

This half-day informal workshop will gather curators, scholars and researchers to debate how recent and contemporary heritage of science, technology and medicine can (and should) be used.

Short presentations from Roland Wittje (Indian Institute of Technology Madras), Clare Meakin (National Museums Scotland), Sam Alberti (National Museums Scotland) and Nicky Reeves (Hunterian) will preface round-table discussions addressing:

* Who are/who will be the users/audiences of recent scientific heritage (educators, scientists, general public, students, historians, etc.)? Is there anything specific about audiences of recent heritage compared to earlier periods? (how) should we reach out to audiences and users for our contemporary collections or connect to new audiences/users/?

* Should contemporary collecting be audience/user driven? should we make audiences/users participate (engage) in our collecting activities? how could this be done? should we make collecting more relevant and more transparent to our audiences/users, and how could this be done? how do we balance competing interests of different audiences/users (scientists/historians/educators/general public) against each other? again, what, if anything is specific to contemporary collecting?

* What are the dangers of user/audience driven collecting? maybe users/audiences should have no say in collecting at all. After all, conventional archiving is not driven by the users/audiences of archives either. What do we miss out if we only collect things for which we can identify users, uses or audiences? how can we justify collecting objects for which we cannot identify users, uses or audiences?

* Audiences, users and uses of scientific collections have been rapidly changing in recent decades. How can we anticipate future audiences, users and uses of contemporary heritage? how can we make these part of our collecting activities? how can we collect for the future without being too stuck in our (arguably short-lived) present concerns and discourses?

Please write to Roland.Wittje(at)gmail.com to register for the Workshop. You will also have to register for the Universeum meeting at https://www.gla.ac.uk/events/universeum2018/registration/