IPERION HSIntegrating Platforms for the European Research Infrastructure ON Heritage Science

The British Museum (BM)

http://www.britishmuseum.org/

The British Museum, ‘a museum of the world, for the world’, is one of the world’s pre-eminent museums with over 7 million registered objects, attracting around 6 million visitors a year. The collections cover world cultures from ~ 1,200,000 BCE to the present day. Alongside the eight curatorial departments, the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research (established in the 1920s) is responsible for the conservation, preservation, technical examination and analysis of all the Museum’s collections. The department has around 75 full time staff (~55 conservators and 12scientists) but welcomes a large number of visiting museum professionals, fellows, graduate students and interns every year.

Expertise of the department in the documentation, preservation, treatment, examination and analysis of the collections will be brought to the IPERION-CH project, helping to ensure that the research and networking activities can be linked directly to museum/institutional practice and context, both at the partner institutions and more widely.

The Museum’s in-house scientific research facilities include: microscopy (metallographic, biological, petrographic, boroscopy; VP-SEM and FE SEM both with EDX); X-ray based or elemental techniques (X-ray diffractometry, X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, ICP-AES); chromatographic facilities (GC-MS, LC-MS, ion chromatograph); spectroscopic methods (Raman and FTIR spectroscopy and microscopy) and imaging capabilities (X-radiography, infrared reflectography, visible-induced infrared luminescence (VIL) and ultraviolet-induced visible luminescence (UVL) imaging).

Contact Person
Carl Heron

E-Mail Address
CHeron@britishmuseum.org