The European Academic Heritage Network UNIVERSEUM announces its 15th annual meeting. UNIVERSEUM invites submissions of papers on academic heritage in its broadest sense, tangible and intangible, namely the preservation, study, access and promotion of university collections, museums, archives, libraries, botanical gardens, astronomical observatories, and university buildings of historical, artistic and scientific significance. The theme of the conference is ‘Enhancing University Heritage‐Based research’, though papers on other topics are welcomed too. Post‐graduate students are especially encouraged to attend.

Cultural heritage is widely studied, from collection studies to historical and social studies of science, research in the natural sciences, didactic research, museum studies, and conservation and restoration analysis. Research is one of universities’ core missions. How can university heritage based‐research be regarded with respect to this mission? What kind of research is being done and how is it presented to the general public? How can we make university heritage more relevant in research development and outreach? How does research contribute to transform the places where universities’ everyday activities are taking place into heritage? How can it turn artefacts, specimens, books, manuscripts and documents produced or gathered by universities into heritage? To what extent can university heritage as a whole be recognized as a multidisciplinary large‐scale tool for research activities? We welcome experiences, case‐studies and in‐ depth papers that help us identify the nature and specificity of these issues and concerns.

The conference language is English. Paper presentations will be 15 min or 20 min. A poster session will be also organized. Accommodation details, a preliminary programme and the abstract template will be provided at 
http://www.hs.uni-hamburg.de/DE/GNT/events/universeum-hh-2014.php.

Please send abstract proposals (max 200 words) and a short biography highlighting main research interests (max. 50 words) to Gudrun Wolfschmidt before 28 February 2014.