Climate Festival 2026 - How natural history collections help save the world
When:
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Venue:
Birkbeck Central
How can drawers of beetles, pressed plants, and centuries-old specimens help us confront today’s environmental crises?
Until a decade or so ago, the common perception of natural history museums was that they were simultaneously “old-fashioned” and “just for kids”. But in the last ten years, there has been a noticeable shift in recognising that these collections are the world’s greatest evidence base for some of the most significant challenges of our time – climate change and biodiversity loss. Such collections have long underpinned environmental science, but new disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches are radically rethinking what and who such collections are for, and what they can do.
Jack Ashby (University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge) and Isabel Davis (Natural History Museum, London) share examples of projects from across the disciplines that bring fresh perspectives to historic collections, revealing their potential to inform climate action, biodiversity conservation, and more sustainable futures. The panel asks: what kinds of intellectual, institutional, and political energy are needed to scale up this work? How are natural history museums shifting from being repositories of the past to active agents of environmental change?
Hosted by: Centre for Museum Cultures for Birkbeck Climate Festival
Contact name: External Relations Events
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