CfP: New Horizons for Medical Museums, Leiden 2020
Conference: New Horizons for Medical Museums
Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, Leiden / the Netherlands, 23-26 September 2020
Medical museums are always in flux. Collections containing objects related to the history of medicine and health played a role in teaching, research and learning in the broadest sense. From small scale local collections to national medical heritage entities, ways of dealing with these collections continue to change. The topic of this conference is the role of medical museums (collections) in the past, present and future. To explore this topic, an international and interdisciplinary conference will be held at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in Leiden, the Netherlands between 23 and 26 September 2020. The conference aims to bring curators, scholars, students and medical professionals together to discuss ways of making and keeping medical collections relevant. What could be the place for medical heritage within the new museological landscape? How can we explore new horizons for medical museums?
Papers (20 minutes) might address, but are not limited to the following themes:
● Medical museums and the future
● International collaborations and medical collections
● History of medical museums/collections
● Medical museums and teaching
● New approaches towards exhibiting medical collections
● Audiences old and new - diversity, inclusion and public engagement
● Medical museums and media
We particularly welcome papers or panels that are explicitly inclusive and embed diversity into our discussions.
Proposals for papers should be in a single Word document, including 250-word abstract and a short CV/biographical statement, and sent to Mieneke te Hennepe by 30 April 2020. We also welcome proposals from participants who would like to present or discuss on a roundtable some of the ways that they are working together on medical collections related topics.
This conference will be organized by a new international association for medical museums (the International Association for Medical Museums (IAMM)). This association is the successor of the European Association of Museums of the History of the Medical Sciences (EAMHMS). During the 2020 conference the new international association will be formally launched and the founding committee invites all interested to be part of this new movement.