Dr Sam Alberti
Contact Details
Sam Alberti has left the University of Manchester to take up a new post at the Royal College of Surgeons of England
Profile
Sam is a historian of museums, and holds a joint appointment between the Centre for Museology and the Manchester Museum: as well as teaching the Art Gallery and Museum Studies MA programme, he is Research Fellow at the Museum. He studied chemistry at Durham and history of science at Imperial College before writing a Ph.D. on Victorian natural history at the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield. Prior to joining the school he undertook post-doctoral research at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. Sam is interested in the relationships between museums and universities; he is completing a monograph on the medical museum in Britain; and he is interested in the cultural meanings of zoological specimens.
Current PhD Students
- Hannah Chalk, 'How are objects attributed value? The case of university earth science collections', co-supervised with Dr Nick Merriman, Director, Manchester Museum
- Robert McCombe, 'Gold Under Gravel, Gold Under Glass: The lives and identities of Anglo-Saxon artefacts through excavation, collection and display', co-supervised with Dr Siân Jones, Archaeology
- Christopher Plumb, 'Nature collected, nature captured: Cultures of collecting, visual spectacle and politics of nature', co-supervised with Prof. John Pickstone, CHTSM.
Current Research
History of the Manchester Museum
Sam is the Manchester Museum's resident historian, and his monograph, Nature and Culture: Objects, Disciplines and the Manchester Museum, was published by Manchester University Press in September 2009.
Pathological collections in nineteenth-century Britain
The Human Tissue Act came into force in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on 1 September 2006. This legislation is the result of a decade of debates on the retention and display of human remains. As controversies surrounding the retention of human remains and the use of bodies as art continue to grip public attention (as demonstrated by the controversial work of Gunther von Hagens and Anthony Noel Kelly), the Act has thrown into sharp relief the importance of informed research into the meanings and use of human remains. Sam Alberti is researching the history of pathological and other anatomical objects, placing contemporary discussions into a much-needed historical context. It will result in an in-depth study of the variety of collections in Britain in the long nineteenth century, an era of intense interest in pathological displays, heterodox and orthodox, in which the museum emerged as the hegemonic site for science and medicine and the body was mapped in material culture in unprecedented detail. This study will expose the meanings of human remains to anatomists and audiences, and the passage of the body parts from hospital ward (or grave) to collection. This project is undertaken in conjunction with the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine.
University museums
The Centre for Museology draws on the Whitworth Art Gallery and the Manchester Museum extensively not only in learning and teaching, but also in research. The past, present and future of higher education collections in the UK and elsewhere is central to the research interests of Helen Rees Leahy and Sam Alberti.
The afterlife of animals
Sam is interested in the scientific, historical and cultural
meanings of zoological specimens in museums, from spirit specimens to
taxidermic mounts. Using object biographies of particular 'charismatic
megafauna', he is currently studying the role of museums in
human-animal relations. In collaboration with colleagues in the
Manchester Museum and elsewhere, Sam is seeking to promote a wider
understanding of the preservation and provenances of specimens and to
suggest new ways to develop collections as both natural and cultural
heritage. A collaborative volume of animal biographies is underway, as
well as a pilot study evaluating the value of this work to current
museum practice.
Sam's roles include
- Associate, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine
- Board Member, Museums and Galleries History Group
Selected Publications
- [with Bernadette Lynch] 'Legacies of Prejudice: History, Race and Co-Production in the Museum' Museum Management and Curatorship 25 (2010), 13-35
- 'Nature and Culture: Objects, Disciplines and the Manchester Museum (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009)
- 'Wax Bodies: Art and Anatomy in Victorian Museums', Museum History Journal 2 (2009), 7-36
- 'Constructing Nature behind Glass', Museum and Society, 6 (2008), 73-97
- 'Molluscs, mummies and moon rock: the Manchester Museum and Manchester Science', Manchester Region History Review 18 (2007), 108-132
- 'The Museum Affect: Visiting Collections of Anatomy and Natural History', in Aileen Fyfe and Bernard Lightman, ed., Science in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century Sites and Experiences (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007)
- 'Culture and Nature: The Place of Anthropology in the Manchester Museum', Journal of Museum Ethnography 19 (2006), 7-21
- 'Objects and the museum', Isis 96 (2005), 559-571
- 'Owning and collecting natural objects in nineteenth-century Britain', in Marco Berretta, ed., From Private to Public: Natural Collections and Museums (New York: Science History Publications, 2005), 141-154
- 'Civic Cultures and Civic Colleges in Victorian England', in The Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain, ed. Martin Daunton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 337-356
- [as contributor and supervisory editor for natural history] Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists, ed. Bernard Lightman, 4 vols (Bristol: Thoemmes, 2004)
- 'Conversaziones and the Experience of Science in Victorian England', Journal of Victorian Culture 8 (2003), 208-230
- 'Natural History and the Philosophical Societies of Late Victorian Yorkshire', Archives of Natural History 30 (2003), 342-358
- [with Alison Kraft] ' 'Equal Though Different' : Laboratories, Museums and the Institutional Development of Biology in Late-Victorian Northern England', Studies in History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences 34 (2003), 203-236
- 'Placing Nature: Natural History Collections and their Owners in Provincial Nineteenth-Century England' British Journal for the History of Science 35 (2002), 291-311
- 'Amateurs and Professionals in One County: Biology and Natural History in Late Victorian Yorkshire', Journal of the History of Biology 34 (2001), 115-147