Dr Laura Humphreys

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!

A blurry reflection of me in the gold leaf heat shield behind the driver's seat of an F1 internal monocoque chassis

Self portrait in the heat shield of a 1992 McLaren F1 car.

Some days, museum collections are very cool indeed.

Cardiff has quite possibly the most dense concentration of artisan bakeries in Europe and I for one am *honoured* to live in such a city.

We're 300 followers away from 70,000. 300 more would be really nice. But you know what would be even better? 300 plus 30,000.

Bluesky: help a museum out

I'd jump at this but living in Wales/ working in England means I'm uniquely unqualified. But at a recent MA thing I was surprised how few applications came from Wales and Northern Ireland.

Would love for this to change, your input will make such a difference!

💚Iarratas Anois // Ymgeisiwch Nawr ❤️

Amazing opportunity here to have a say in MA policies and procedures, representing the UK's four nations. Do apply to represent your nation and the devolved issues of culture you're dealing with.

#NIMuseums #ScottishMuseums #WelshMuseums #EnglishMuseums

Like many of you, we’re heading to the Wales for the summer holidays with this beautiful painting for #OnlineArtExchange @artukdotorg.bsky.social in celebration of Oriel Môn's exhibition 'From the Collection' 🖼️

🖼️A Sketch in Wales
👨‍🎨William James Müller (1812–1845)
📸Sheffield Museums

147 at close of play. Would still ban them if that was a viable option. I would dearly love to go back to the snarky physical memos of old that I often find in archives...

Even closer, the London Welsh School also exists in Ealing...

This thought brought to you by the fact I have 590 emails and untold chaos in my inbox and I'm trying to get it cleared today and I am already praying for death pre-9am.

I fucking *hate* email.

When anyone talks about "labour saving" tech I love to tell them that actually it just raises standards, costs money, & doesn't make anyone's life easier.

When they don't believe me: EMAIL. Basically free, instant, and easier than post. But tell me - how much labour has email saved you lately?

Still stumped by this one… #palaeography

I see grocery/takeout shaming discourse going around again, so this is your periodic historian reminder that cooking from scratch daily while working has never been sustainable, and for millennia everyone either relied on takeout & restaurants or ate in huge households w/ big dorm-like group dining.