WOMNH is an international consortium which promotes collaborations between researchers and museum professionals through the organisation of workshops and online talks. It examines the roles women played in the making of natural history collections and museums, highlighting their often overlooked presence and invisible labour, investigating knowledge gaps, focusing on women as museum’s employees, collectors and practitioners of science and hidden participants in the construction of natural history, but also as dehumanized objects of study in the case of marginalized or colonialized women. By looking at how women contributed – voluntarily or involuntarily – to the making of natural history collections and knowledge around the world, within museums, in the field and at home, over time, WOMNH relates as well to contemporary discussions around social justice, participatory sciences and decolonization.
The founding members of WOMNH are: Linda Andersson Burnett (Uppsala University), Anita Hermannstädter / Sabine von Mering (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin), Stefanie Jovanovic-Kruspel (Naturhistorisches Museum Wien), Zoë M. Simmons (Oxford University Museum of Natural History), and Laurence Talairach (Alexandre-Koyré Center/University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès)
For more information, please see: https://womnh.hypotheses.org/
Image: John Leech, The Mermaids Haunt, Wikimedia Commons
