[ATHENA] APPEL A COMMUNICATION, UNIVERSEUM, UNIVERSITÉ DE WROCLAW, 4-7 JUILLET 2023

["s.soubiran" <s.soubiran AT unistra.fr>]

Cher.e.s collègues,

Vous trouverez ci-dessous l’appel à communication pour la prochaine conférence annuel d’Universeum, le réseau européen pour la préservation et la valorisation du patrimoine universitaire.

Au plaisir de vous y retrouver,

Cordialement,

S. Soubiran

XXXX

Dear colleagues,

Dear friends,

First of all the colleagues from the board join me to wish you all a warmfull and stupendous new year. 

Our best thought are for our ukrainian colleagues and their remarkable courage towards the war: let’s hope this year will see the end of this barbaric invasion.

Facing lots of challenging issues within society the role of our community is even more acute. Being at the interface between the broader public and universities, between local communities and academics is a very important but difficult role in these polarized times. More than ever, the role of academic heritage is paramount in developing tools for creating and supporting dialogue, engagement and participation of the wider community and to make scientific knowledge accessible and intelligible. 

More than ever the role of Universeum should enhance our capacity to work together in that direction and facilitate the sharing of our professional practices and knowledge.

Our next annual conference, that will be host by the University of Wroclaw in Poland, 4th-7th July 2023, will give us the opportunity to move forward in that direction. During the 2023 Universeum meeting, we want to reflect on and share our “Experience of Academic Heritage”.

According to ICOM’s new definition of museums of 2022, museums ‘operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing’. How do these ways of experiencing apply to academic heritage? In this UNIVERSEUM annual meeting, we wanted to explore how this is resonating with your practice and with how your audiences are experiencing academic heritage. 

We would like to move beyond only celebrating to also critically reflect about academic heritage and the experiences it offers and provides. Are there other directions in which you would like to take the interpretation and experience of university collections further? Should we be doing more with what we have? What are the opportunities and obstacles in realising our full potential within our collections, museums, institutions?

Subtheme 1: By whom and for whom?

University collections are presented in many different ways and are experienced by different communities and groups. Increasingly, university museums are working together with various groups to agree on themes, approaches, and interpretations of academic heritage.

• How conscious are we of our curation and interpretation processes and how these are experienced by different audiences?
• How can we find out if the experience is received as we intended and by whom? How can we learn from this? How do we react to unexpected outcomes? 
• Does who is involved in the design of these experiences affect the end result and how these are experienced?

Subtheme 2: Experiencing difficult heritage

Experiencing academic heritage can go beyond having fun and joy. They can also include encountering issues and ideas from a long history of academic practices and institutional history that make us uncomfortable and can be disturbing. 

• What is the role of university museums and collection custodians in this process? 
• How can they facilitate and encourage debates on difficult heritage in an effective way and not hide from them?

Subtheme 3: Media and methods of interpretation

When designing experiences of academic heritage, we use various means in our disposal for presenting and interpreting these. Some of these, like storytelling, have remained unchanged over the years, while others are constantly evolving, like the use of new technologies and social media.

• How do our media and methods for setting up experiences of academic heritage, for instance the language and tools we use, affect the messages we are trying to communicate? 
• And whom do we involve in the process of selecting and designing interpretative tools and approaches? 
• How can we evaluate their effectiveness?

During the 2023 Universeum meeting, we want to explore different ways of encouraging discussion and debate, as well as allow as many voices from the community to be heard as possible. We would like to combine short papers, with longer in-depth contributions that reflect more broadly on these themes rather than present specific projects, as well as invite dialogue and discussions from all participants. 

SUBMISSIONS

Format of submissions

Under these themes, we invite proposals for:

• 5-minute talks
• 15-minute talks
• posters

Guidelines for submissions

You will find all necessary information and the abstract template on Universeum website.

The conference language is English. We welcome contributions from cultural heritage professionals and academics, but also post‐graduate students who are encouraged to present.

Please send your abstract proposal (max. 200 words), with an indication of the session you are submitting to (sub-theme 1, sub-theme 2, or 3), plus a short biographical note highlighting main research interests and/or field of professional experience (max. 50 words) to the following email address using the abstract template by Tuesday 28 February 2023: sekretarz.muzeauczelniane AT gmail.com

Travel Grants

The UNIVERSEUM Board is able to offer a small number of travel grants of up to 300 Euros each to students whose proposal (for either a poster or a talk) to present at the conference has been accepted.

You can tick the related box if you want to apply in the abstract template.

 

Programme Committee:

Frédérique Andry-Cazin, Sorbonne-Universities, UPMC (France), Treasurer of UNIVERSEUM 

Natalia Bahlawan, Jagiellonian University Museum (Poland)

Esther Boeles, University of Amsterdam (NL), Secretary of UNIVERSEUM 

Marek Bukowski, Medical University of Gdańsk (Poland), Vice-President of the Polish Association of University Museums

Maria Economou, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow (UK), Vice-President of UNIVERSEUM 

Hubert Kowalski, Warsaw University (Poland), President of the Polish Association of University Museums

Magdalena Muskała, Medical University of Białystok (Poland), Vice-President of the Polish Association of University Museums

Marta Piszczatowska, Warsaw University Museum (Poland), Vice-President of the Polish Association of University Museums

Joanna Ślaga, Jagiellonian University Museum (Poland), Vice-President of the Polish Association of University Museums

Sébastien Soubiran, University of Strasbourg (France), President of UNIVERSEUM 

Martin Stricker, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Germany), Vice-President of UNIVERSEUM 

Marta Szaszkiewicz, (Museum of the University of Gdańsk), (Poland), Secretary of the Polish Association of University Museums

We are very much looking forward receiving your abstracts,

Best wishes,

Sebastien

Sébastien Soubiran, Dr
University of Strasbourg
 
President of Universeum
Director of Jardin des sciences
 
Tél : +33 (0)3 68850517
s.soubiran AT unistra.fr

Jardin des sciences
12, rue de l'Université
F - 67000 Strasbourg 
http://jardin-sciences.unistra.fr/

Universeum
https://www.universeum-network.eu/