Landmarks: People & Places Across Australia, is the big new permanent exhibition at the National Museum of Australia. It is a place-centred exhibition that includes many environmental history themes. Open 9-5 every day. Free.
See http://nma.gov.au/exhibitions/landmarks/
The National Museum of Australia’s entrance and iconic loop. Photo: John Gollings.
The National Museum of Australia and the Australian Academy of Science through its National Committee for History and Philosophy of Science invite submissions for the
2011 National Museum of Australia Student Prize
for the History of Australian Science or Australian Environmental History
The Prize will be a certificate and $2,500
Please the note: the revised closing date for submissions is 25 March 2011.
The prize will be awarded for an essay based on original unpublished research undertaken whilst enrolled as a student (postgraduate or undergraduate) at any tertiary educational institution in the world.
The essay should be 4,000 – 8,000 words in length (exclusive of endnotes). Essays must be written in English and fully documented following the style specified for the Australian Academy of Science’s journal, Historical Records of Australian Science (see http://www.publish.csiro.au/media/client/HRnta.pdf for details).
Essays may deal with any aspect of the History of Australian Science (including medicine and technology) or Australian Environmental History. ‘Australia’ can include essays that focus on the Australian region, broadly defined, including Oceania. Essays that compare issues and subjects associated with Australia with those of other places are also welcomed. The winning entry, if it is in a suitable subject area, may be considered for publication in Historical Records of Australian Science.
The judging panel will have three members:
– Chair (or nominee), National Committee for History and Philosophy of Science (Chair of panel).
– Editor (or nominee), Historical Records of Australian Science.
– Director of Research (or nominee), National Museum of Australia.
In the e-mail covering your essay you should indicate:
Full name
Contact details (postal and e-mail addresses and telephone number)
Title of submission
University course (and year of course if undergraduate)
Student number
Your submission must be accompanied by a letter or e-mail from your academic supervisor attesting that the essay meets the eligibility criterion set out above.
Please send your submission electronically in WORD or PDF format to Connie Berridge, National Committees Officer, National Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science, Australian Academy of Science, connie.berridge@science.org.au
Judges’ decisions are final. The judges retain the right to split the prize, or not to award it. The winner will be contacted by mail and/or e-mail, and will be announced on the websites of the National Museum of Australia and the Australian Academy of Science in June 2011.
“What is the point of old archaeological and anthropological collections in the 21st century?”
Dr Christopher Chippindale
Visiting curator from Cambridge Museum and Reader in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge England
Thursday 25th February
6.00 – 7.30 pm Friends Lounge
National Museum of Australia
The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) at the University of Cambridge is an old collection, founded in 1883 and incorporating older accumulations. Its original mission was the high Victorian idea of a combined ethnology-archaeology, studying the primitives in both their ancient and their modern variants. A new programme to modernise its buildings and re-shape its displays prompts it to ask fundamental questions about its collections and its mission. What are they for? Who is their audience today? Are they still of merit and value? Or should the MAA recognise its obsolescence and simply close?
Cost: $5 Friends, NMA & ANU Staff, $10 non members
Dr Christopher Chippindale is curator of the Cambridge Museum (MAA), also a field archaeologist and Reader in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge England, and a long term associate of the Centre for Archaeology Research at the ANU. He is a Visiting Fellow with the Department of Archaeology and Natural History ANU for February 2010.
Bookings are required for all Friends events. Please phone 02 6208 5048 or send an email to friends@nma.gov.au
A new exhibition looking at water has opened at the National Museum of Australia. ‘Water: H2O=Life’ opened on 3 December and runs till 16 May. The exhibition was created by the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the NMA is one of the international partners and the only Australian venue for the show. NMA has added a display on Australia’s water story. The exhibition looks at a broad range of aspects of water’s role on Earth, including its place in the natural world and humans’ use of water over thousands of years. The Australian component is based on the themes of Australia being the driest inhabited continent and having an extremely variable rainfall. A great collection of objects, interactives, live animals (including a 4kg Murray Cod), films and soundscapes make for an engaging experience for all visitors. Water is the biggest issue facing Australia, and the influence of climate change is a theme throughout the exhibition, making the show particularly relevant to our times.
Further information at the exhibition web site
The National Museum of Australia and the Australian Academy of Science through its National Committee for History and Philosophy of Science invite submissions for the
The Prize will be a certificate and $2,500
Closing date for submissions 26 February 2010.
The prize will be awarded for an essay based on original unpublished research undertaken whilst enrolled as a student (postgraduate or undergraduate) at any tertiary educational institution in the world.
The essay should be 4,000 – 8,000 words in length (exclusive of endnotes). Essays must be written in English and fully documented following the style specified for the Australian Academy of Science’s journal, Historical Records of Australian Science (see HRAS Author Guidelines for details).
Essays may deal with any aspect of the History of Australian Science (including medicine and technology) or Australian Environmental History. ‘Australia’ can include essays that focus on the Australian region, broadly defined, including Oceania. Essays that compare issues and subjects associated with Australia with those of other places are also welcomed. The winning entry, if it is in a suitable subject area, may be considered for publication in Historical Records of Australian Science.
The judging panel will have three members:
In the e-mail covering your essay you should indicate:
Full name
Contact details (postal and e-mail addresses and telephone number)
Title of submission
University course (and year of course if undergraduate)
Student number
Your submission must be accompanied by a letter or e-mail from your academic supervisor attesting that the essay meets the eligibility criterion set out above.
Please send your submission electronically in WORD or PDF format to Connie Berridge, National Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science, Australian Academy of Science, connie.berridge@science.org.au
Judges’ decisions are final. The judges retain the right to split the prize, or not to award it. The winner will be contacted by mail and/or e-mail, and will be announced on the websites of the National Museum of Australia and the Australian Academy of Science in June 2010.
Closing date for submissions Friday 26 February 2010.
Photo: Dan Shirley.
Julian Holland, Associate of the Centre for Historical Research, National Museum of Australia
Fenner School Seminar Series
Thursday 27 August 2009,
1-2pm, in Fenner School Forrestry Lecture Theatre, Forestry Building 48.
Australian National University
Weather reports are the almost universal accompaniment to news bulletins. Their combination of maps, numerical data and forecasts is so familiar as to seem an unarguable commonplace. Yet the ideas, instruments and practices which underpin the modern scientific understanding of weather had a long development. A subject as large-scale, amorphous and changeable as the weather was a challenge to the technical resources, intellectual methods and cultural assumptions of past centuries. Weather forecasting as a modern scientific endeavour only had its modest and controversial beginnings in the 1860s.
This talk will look at a diverse range of ideas and circumstances which shaped the understanding of weather in the two centuries before weather forecasting began. This illustrated talk was first presented in June 2008 as the scene-setting paper for a seminar on the history of Australian meteorology held at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney as part of the 150th anniversary celebrations of Sydney Observatory.
Further information at Fenner School Seminar Series and Julian Holland’s NMA profile.
