Workshop 5:  objects

North Carolina Museum of natural sciences (Raleigh, NC), spring 2019

This workshop – organized in collaboration with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences - examined how particular palaeontological objects have been presented and discussed in public contexts, whether these be organisms, periods, specimens, institutions like museums and research laboratories, and individual palaeontologists. In doing so, itwe reflected on how particular things have either been the focus of public discussion or been occluded in these processes.

Questions of particular importance were:

• Which organisms, periods, institutions and styles of work have been most prominent in public presentations of palaeontological research, and why has this been?

• Which organisms, periods, institutions and styles of work have been less prominent, and why? Has this always been the case?

• What techniques have been used to attempt to overcome these challenges?

 Attendees: Alicia McGill, Lydia Pyne, Matt Brown, Blythe Williams, Ilja Nieuwland, Richard Kay, Caitlyn Wylie, Lisa Herzog, Riley Black, Elizabeth Dobson-Jones, Ben Miller, Shaena Montanari, ReBecca Hunt-Foster, Dan Ksepka and Nate Smith.