28th June 14:00 – 14:20
Speaker: Dr Tim Boon
Abstract: The Congruence Engine project within the AHRC’s ‘Towards a National Collection’ funding scheme has been investigating how digital methods can be employed to link heritage collections of all kinds for the purposes of enhancing historical and curatorial practice, and rendering collections more accessible. The paper will explore why material artefacts are particularly difficult to connect using linked open data, and show the progress that project researchers have made, both in understanding the problem and in finding promising techniques for solving it.
Bio: Dr Tim Boon, Science Museum Group Head of Research & Public History, is a historian and curator of the public culture of science. His published research (the books Films of Fact (2008) Material Culture and Electronic Sound (co-edited, 2013), and Artefacts: Understanding Use (co-edited, 2024), and 50+ papers) relates to science in museums, documentary, and music. He contributed to the museum displays Making the Modern World (2000) and Oramics to Electronica (2011). He is currently PI of Congruence Engine, and his previous achievements include AHRC funded projects on the public history of science and technology, on sound and music in modernity, and on intermedial comparison of TV and museum representations of science. He is a former President of the British Society for the History of Science.