Changing Tides: Addressing DEI in the Curation of Science, Technology, and Medical Collections

Abstract

In this panel, four curators will address the challenges posed by institutional collecting mandates for science, technology, and medical collections. Each curator will address the particular legacies of their collections as well as their own attempts to redress those legacies with a particular eye toward how the momentum for repairing the historic gaps around marginalized communities seems to have stalled in STEM collections. Panelists will pay special attention to how they are grappling with the historical conceptualizations of what "counts" as scientific research to address the ways the marginalized people have often been refused a place in discourses of science, technology, and medicine more broadly.