Case studies of various scale and related to various questions about objects and people on the move have been preselected in preparatory meetings and exchanges organized in 2019. Many research travels planned in the framework of the SciCoMove project are supposed to provide researchers with the opportunity to visit, access, and study archives and collections necessary for implementing these case studies.
Some cases focus on a specific collection and collector, for example:
- the collection of Gatien Chaplain-Duparc (1819–1888), an amateur prehistorian who also collected ethnographic artefacts during his travels in America;
- the collection of Carlos Berg (1843–1902), director of the Museo Nacional de Historia natural in Montevideo (1890–1892) and of the Museo Nacional de Historia natural in Buenos Aires (1892–1902);
- Eugène Monguillon’s (1865–1940) herbaria at Le Mans Musée Vert.
Other cases focus on the circulation of specimens or casts from a point of origin to diverse destinations, for example:
- prehistoric artefacts from the Neuchâtel area will be traced to La Plata and provincial collections in Western France;
- skull series from the Lombroso criminal anthropology collection in Turin, Italy;
- fossil mammals bones from La Plata and Montevideo.
Others will deal with the circulation of one type of objects on a global scale:
- plants in pharmacy collections;
- “Pre-Columbian antiquities” from “Peru or Mexico”.
All these topics and cases will be discussed collectively. They will be presented to all the members of the consortium at a launching workshop in November 2021 in order to set their precise orientation and delimitation.
This discussion will result in the selection of a limited number of objects (around 20) coming from all the partners’ collections that will not only illustrate the results and achievements of our scholarly endeavour but will also feature in the digital exhibition which we plan to organize at the end of the project.