Previous events
This talk explores Labelling Matters, a project at the Pitt Rivers Museum that critically re-examines the language, authority, and narratives embedded in museum displays.
Italy had more cities than any other region in the early medieval West, and these cities were the locus of authority, prestige, and commerce. How did urban food cultivation contribute to reshaping city environments and hierarchies of influence? Welcome to a SENKU Seminar about urban gardening in Early Medieval Italy with Professor Caroline Goodson at the University of Cambridge.
Emotions shape how we create, experience, and interpret art, yet their historical dimensions remain understudied. In this presentation, Dr Atena Ungureanu introduces the MSCA-funded project EMOTIA – Emotional Markers Of Text and Iconography in Art – which investigates how emotions are embedded in ancient artefacts such as Egyptian coffins and papyri, and how they continue to affect audiences today.
In this talk, Associate Professor Florent Audy shows how a contextual approach—tracing coins through production, use, deposition, retrieval and collection—reveals their multifaceted meanings and shifts focus from objects to the people who produced, exchanged and valued them.
Centering on Mayan water beings within a wider global comparison, this lecture examines how aquatic deities link cosmology, ecology, and human agency. It argues that such figures offer powerful narratives for reimagining more reciprocal and sustainable human-non-human relations.
The Giovanni Poleni Museum of the University of Padua in Italy was radically renovated and reopened in September 2021. The new exhibition aims at shedding light on the way physicists have been working, as well as on the connections that were set in the last centuries between physics and other disciplines, such as art, architecture, medicine or psychology.
I forberedelse til Samenes nasjonaldag, 6.februar, inviterer vi til SENKU seminar med Harald Gaski. Harald Gaski er fra Deatnu i Finnmark og er tidligere professor i samisk litteratur og kultur ved UiT Norges arktiske universitet og Sámi allaskuvla/ Samisk høgskole i Guovdageaidnu. I foredraget deler Gaski sine refleksjoner rundt samisk åndelighet og tilknytningen til landet i et perspektiv inspirert av ideen om å gjøre ting på egne betingelser.
In this paper, Professor Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme discusses how the Hebrew Bible depicts Yahweh’s sanctuary as filled with luxurious, exotic aromas. This scented symbolism conveys Yahweh’s position as supreme king and masculine authority while signifying divine presence and being.
The Museum of Cultural History in Oslo holds an important collection of forty-one Sinhālese dance masks. In this talk Dumith Kulasekara will introduce the historical context of their acquisition in 1887.
Join us for an insightful seminar with Dr. Gareth Williams from the research group "Money and its use in the Middle Ages," as he delves into the phenomenon of Viking camps. This talk will explore the multifaceted economic activities within these camps, shedding light on their role in the transition from rural to urban societies in Scandinavia and beyond.
Join us to hear Professor Haidy Geismar’s compelling account of the future of Hinemihi, a Māori meeting house (whare) in the gardens of Clandon park, Surrey. A story about the dual imaginary of a new mansion house and a new meeting house, the past in the present, material change, statutory consents and culture wars.
Join us for this collaborative presentation by Nadine Panayot and Lucy Semaan, on coastal and marine heritage in Lebanon. Panayot will speak on the UNESCO inscription of the site of Anfeh in North Lebanon.This presentation highlights an interdisciplinary project centered on the site of Anfeh in North Lebanon. Semaan will introduce diversity and maritime cultural heritage across the Lebanese coast, and a holistic approach to conservation.
Join us for this presentation from our Museum of Science and University History's, Klingvall and Wittje, sharing their experiences with three exhibition projects in the Department of Physics.
Join us as Professor Eamonn Carrabine from the University of Essex presents his compelling talk, “Dark Tourism and the Museum Effect.” This discussion will delve into how museum environments shape the increasingly popular dark tourism experience and influence visitor interactions with representations of historical atrocities and human suffering.
Join us for this talk where Noé Conejo explores funerary practices involving coins in Late Antique and Early Medieval northern Italy, highlighting evolving rituals and regional variations reflecting the era's complex socio-political and religious shifts.
You are invited to an exclusive film screening of Returning Life. This captivating documentary follows Peter's journey down Mount Kilimanjaro to Kenya as he and a group of Chagga and Kamba-speaking elders perform a rain ritual in honor of their ancestor Horombo. Witness the crossing of linguistic, ethnic, and international boundaries and join the filmmakers for an open discussion on the film's form and content before its official release.
Join us for an engaging talk by Manuela Fischer, as she delves into the intriguing connections between technology, power, and belief in the Moche society. Discover how the Museum's remarkable pre-Columbian artifacts shed light on ancient rituals and the challenges faced by ruling lords in Peru's coastal desert environment.
Exploring materiality and performance in ritual practice, this paper aims to convey the way text, but also things, are embedded in modes of signification. In contexts characterized by an entanglement of text, objects, and bodily practices, the written is inscribed in practice and form – its’ semantics trusted.
Objects of Understanding, co-authored by Roland Wittje and Peter Heering, explores the rich history of scientific instruments and educational artefacts from the 18th to 21st centuries, shedding light on their role in shaping scientific knowledge and practices. In this talk, Wittje will present the book and discuss the necessity of studying teaching collections at the University of Oslo to understand their origins, usage, and evolution within broader historical and geographical contexts.
Ethnographies of indigenous uses of digital platforms involves challenges of anonymity, in what can be a violent and charged political situation. This is how artistic approaches may help.
Photographs play a fundamental role in the definition and management of museums and their collections. In this talk Professor Elizabeth Edwards suggests the extent to which one might argue that museums are held together by their photographic practices. Yet these processes are largely invisible in their quotidian presence, spread across collections management, conservation, display and marketing for instance.
Indigenous archaeology advocates for contemporary engagements with archaeological collections in ways that are meaningful and culturally sensitive to descendant communities.
In the past 20 years, university museums have become more relevant public spaces of engagement and open debate about contemporary scientific, political, economic, and social issues. This talk will examine the past two decades to identify key drivers and actors for this development, while also discussing future perspectives and challenges.
How have individuals, communities, government, and non-government institutions imagined, regulated, and mobilised technical and scientific forms of knowledge together with objects and people across regions during the Cold War? Associate Professor Roland Wittje will discuss his research in the history of science and technology at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.