Behind the Glass Cabinet

In this episode Alice Procter joins Ellie to talk about Joseph Banks' Platypus on display at the British Musuem's Enlightenment Gallery. We discuss Cook's voyages and collections and their reception on his return to London. We also explore uncritical reconstructions of Enlightenment galleries at the British Museum and elsewhere; and how Europeans understood and described Australia in the 1700-1900 period.

Alice Procter is an art historian and museum activist. She runs Uncomfortable Art Tours, exploring the representation of colonial collections and legacies of imperialism in national museums.

In this episode Claire Murray explores the other users and developers of instruments like the 'Bragg X-ray spectrometer, England, 1910-1926', including scientists such as Kathleen Lonsdale. We discuss the pioneering work of these scientists in the field, Lonsdale career and the way she is celebrated today, and how important her data still is in the field today.

Claire is an Irish scientist working at Diamond Light Source, the UK's national synchrotron. She was fascinated by atoms and molecules as a teenager and has managed to make looking at them her career! She is currently investigating molecules of calcium carbonate that were made by 1,000 secondary school students as part of Project M. Claire believes that science should be accessible and enjoyable for all, at whatever level they choose to do explore it.

In this episode Dan Vo explores the communities represented in the 'Kissing Doesn't Kill. Greed and Indifference Do.' poster displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum. We discuss the prominance of interracial relationships on the poster, political straplines, and contemporary reflections and proactive measures on HIV/AIDS.

Dan is a Victoria and Albert ambassador and founded the permanent volunteer-led LGBTQ Tour at the museum in 2015. He was the recipient of the inaugural Museums Association award ‘Museums Change Lives Radical Changemaker 2018’.

In this episode Lyman Gamberton explores the cultural connotations and political construction of the Science Museum's display of 'Bowl from Hiroshima, Japan'. We discuss which identites are represented and which are hidden through object selection and positioning, and consider and their framing of the event in relation to other events showcased in the Making the Modern World Gallery.

Lyman Gamberton is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. His area of specialisation is the body and material culture in Japanese social contexts, with a particular focus on gender, disability, pathology, and performance. His MA dissertation was an historical-ethnographic study of the role gender played in the self-perceptions of Nagasaki's atomic bomb survivors, 1945-1990. He continues to work in the intersection of Gender, Disability, and Nuclear Studies

In this episode Shaz Hussain explores the Science Museum's display of suncreams and who the items are imagined to be for in the gallery space. Drawing on the Challenge of Materials Gallery's collection of 'everyday' items, we discuss who is imagined as the visitor considering the framing of suncream in relation to whiteness. We discuss the importance of suncream for all and critically dream about ways this could be included in the display.

Shaz is an Assistant Curator at the Science Museum and a member of Museum Detox, a network of people of colour working in museums. She is also the creator of the White Privilege Clinic, a creative intervention that challenges people to rethink systemic and institutional racism in the arts sector. Shaz is interested in how we can better represent people of colour in museums both in the collections and the workforce.

In this episode Sacha Coward explores The Sea Maidens at the Queens House in Greenwich. We discuss love, sexual and gender identities, and life bleeding through into the subjects of paintings. We take this painting as a starting point to explore the significance of mermaids more generally across time and geography.

Sacha is a freelance museum worker, he specialises in projects that involve queer history, escape rooms and mermaids... although rarely at the same time! He rambles a lot on twitter under @sacha_coward and spends a lot of time on trains.

In this episode Zia [X] explores audience responses to ‘After Image’ in the Wellcome Collection’s ‘Medicine Now’ gallery. We take the part of Alexa Wrights’ series that is on display at the Wellcome, and explore the implications of displays in medical museums, and are attentive to the relationship of subjects, objects and audiences when creating exhibitions in science museums.

Zia Álmos Joshua [x] is an educator, artist, researcher, and activish. Its practice is informed by dyslexic writing, cross-species thinking, liberationist ethics, queer dancing, and relative poverty in London. As an educator, it is particularly concerned with interdisciplinarity and communication; sharing knowledge between specialists, and making knowledge accessible to non-specialists, broadening and deepening the field of consciousness. Much of its current work is using art, teaching, and philosophy to explore and communicate scientific, particularly biological, ideas.

In this episode Hana Ayoob explores the importance of Wallace's companion, Ali, and the role that indigenous knowledges, acknowledgements, and understanding our relationships with other mammals play in biological sciences. Taking the Organtun displayed in the Hintze Hall of the Natural History Museum, we explore why Wallace's guide Ali is included in the display, and what this can tell us about biological knowledge circulation in the past, as well as the present.

Hana Ayoob is a creative producer, science communicator and illustrator. She is passionate about bringing people together to explore the world around them. Hana studied zoology at university, and she remains interested in how zoological research is conducted and interpreted.

In this episode Cerys Bradley explores the life, loves and liberation of Amelia Edwards. Departing from a bust of Edwards at the Petrie Museum, University College London, we roam from her bequests and extensive contributions to London archeology, all the way to women in archeology today.

Cerys is a stand-up comedian who performs parody lectures about science and being LGBTQ+. They work part time in the UCL Museums as a PhD Student Engager, talking about their research (on the Dark Web) and the collections with visitors.