Dr Laura Humphreys

Copy of Globalising Welsh Studies: Decolonising history, heritage, society, and culture.

My new book treat arrived! Very excited by this one.

Ri Freer Fellowship Applications for the Freer Fellowship are now open!

📢 Ri Freer Prize Fellowship📢

- 12-month fellowship for research on the history of science & technology, including heritage science.
- Aimed at doctoral candidates in an unfunded writing-up year.
- Get an £18,000 stipend & support to promote your research.

Apply by 31st March 2026:

Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology She made key contributions to US cold-war science despite facing huge barriers as a Black woman.

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.

Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Oral history is a history built around people. It thrusts life into history itself and it widens its scope. It allows heroes not just from the leaders, but also from the unknown majority of the people. It encourages teachers and students to become fellow-workers. It brings history into, and out of, the community. It helps the less privileged, and especially the old, towards dignity and self-confidence. It makes for contact - and thence understanding - between social classes, and between generations, And to individual historians and others, with shared meanings, it can give asense of belonging to a place or in time. In short it makes for fuller human beings.

I've been reading about oral history today and as something I've built a lot of my work around, and something I'm intending to bring into my research, I just loved this paragraph by Paul Thompson that articulates some of how I feel about it.

'It makes for fuller human beings.' Lovely.

A vital piece of Cardiff History preserved at my Mum's house. RIP Capitol Centre food court, you were the best.

#CardiffHistory #WelshHistory

Toy duck used in preparation for the Rosetta probe mission, 2014 | Science Museum Group Collection Toy duck used by Open University Ptolemy team to choose landing site of Philae lander on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko during Rosetta probe mission, 2014.

May I offer this special space duck? collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co84...

Museum-led repatriation of Second World War human remains: the case of Preben Holger Larsen - Science Museum Group Journal

Super proud of this one - sometimes in museums we get to do the right thing & correct a historical wrong.

Honoured to have played a part in returning Preben Holger Larsen's remains to Denmark, and I hope sharing our methods helps other museums follow difficult research threads.

bit.ly/4iZXCpX

And Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, was present at the end of the universe, having witnessed every black hole evaporate and every proton decay. Even so, Death would not come.

UK to rejoin EU’s Erasmus student exchange programme Exclusive: British students will be able to participate in EU-wide scheme from January 2027, sources say

Excellent news: from January 2027, British students will once again be able to take part in the EU’s Erasmus student exchange programme.

This is something I have long campaigned for and is a huge win for London and our young people.

What do McLaren and the Concorde have in common? 🏎️✈️

The 2025 double-winning F1 team was also the first to put carbon fibre into race-car structures back in the ’60s, thanks to engineers who came straight from working on the supersonic plane.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/48pTlbR

Well this has spread quite far, which is wonderful.

Oprigtig tak/ Sincere thanks to colleagues @sciencemuseum.org.uk, @wellcomecollection.bsky.social and at #Mindelunden for their work on this repatriation and the article to share how we managed this.

Museum-led repatriation of Second World War human remains: the case of Preben Holger Larsen - Science Museum Group Journal

Super proud of this one - sometimes in museums we get to do the right thing & correct a historical wrong.

Honoured to have played a part in returning Preben Holger Larsen's remains to Denmark, and I hope sharing our methods helps other museums follow difficult research threads.

bit.ly/4iZXCpX

Papaya Rules: McLaren, Concorde, and Carbon Fibre - Science Museum Group Blog After McLaren‘s double victory this year in Formula 1, Curatorial Lead Laura Humphreys looks at their history of innovation in materials science through the collection.

In a brilliant alignment of work & fun, I've been doing a lot of research about McLaren & F1 recently. V. convenient they've now won the double world championship!

Have some fun facts about #McLaren, #F1 and the history of Carbon Fibre as a treat.
blog.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/papaya-rules...

Almost 530 museums have closed since 2000, study finds - Museums Association Research project shows that first decade after opening is the most precarious for museums

This is some depressing, but entirely believable, reading. Over 500 museums closed since 2000 - particularly grim reading about local authority museums.

www.museumsassociation.org/museums-jour...

📢CfP: DIFFICULT COLLECTIONS📢

What can practitioners & researchers do with difficult heritage preserved in galleries, libraries, archives and museums?

- Paper Trails (a Book as Online Open Content) Special Issue
- Proposal deadline: 31/01/2026
- Details: blogs.ucl.ac.uk/special-coll...

🗃️ #GLAM

The Atlantic’s holiday gift guide is out and my contribution is hot dog.

www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025...

Tess Little · Nutshell Crime Scenes: The Rape Kit The​ rape kit is a cardboard box containing ordinary items anyone might own: envelopes, combs, swabs, nail clippers....

‘Before the kits, almost a third of the evidence collected from sexual assault victims in Cook County, Illinois had been inadmissible; after they were introduced, that figure fell to 2 per cent.’

Tess Little on how the ‘rape kit’ transformed sexual assault prosecutions
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Why yes, of course I am well-versed in project management methodologies in museums...

Drop me a DM - we should chat!?

This is brilliant, thank you so much!

Aaaaand now I'm mad you're phone's out of action because I need to see this!

I've just been in meetings. This sounds amazing!

Thanks very much! Will look at any context at the moment. This will be useful.

A weird question for my museum collections nerds on a Monday:

Human Hair in collections. Who's thinking about/ writing about/ discussing this? What hair have you got? How do you approach potential sensitivities?

Please share far and wide! #Museums #Collections #CulturalHeritage

The outrage I feel over this. The penguin has always been a thin veneer of bugger all - but the CLUB?!

We used to be a country

There are a few sneaky cool postboxes around. There's a Victorian one in Roath which has been enveloped by a tree.

I feel like you lot will appreciate this Cardiff postbox...

Turns out that paddock cat might be some kind of vengeful ancient god? #F1 #BakuGP

It's not even the only #F1 car I dealt with today. What a life!