Science and technology museums have, over the last two decades, drawn closer to the universities in the pursuit of their research activities. As they have applied the insights and methodologies of STS, they have always stressed the study of material culture and the place of museums in the cultural economy of the modern world.

Scholars and curators have taken several initiatives to promote high quality academic research into objects, collections and their broader value and significance. The Artefacts Consortium, for example (which has expanded from an original core membership of Science Museum, Deutsches Museum and Smithsonian Institution), has been running annual meetings since 1996 and has produced seven thematic collections of essays.

This symposium, over a day and a half, will ask what has been achieved; how the field has changed; and what new challenges exist for those, inside and outside the museums, who are pursuing the material and visual culture of science, technology and medicine. Has this area of study had the impact on mainstream STS that it promises and, if not, why not?