Why is there a flying saucer in The MERL garden?
Science engagement officer, Robyn Hopcroft, reveals one of our new growing projects and the feat of DIY ingenuity behind an unusual landmark in our garden. If you’ve visited us in the last couple of weeks, you might have noticed that something funny is going on with our garden. Perched above one of the raised beds […]
Tanya Harrod: Archaic Modernists: Women, Textiles and the Margins of Europe
Paddy Bullard reflects on Tanya Harrod’s seminar as part of the Department of English Literature and the MERL speaker series on the ‘Tangible and Intangible Countryside’ Tanya Harrod is the doyenne of modern folk art studies, and the most distinguished historian and critic of craft working in Great Britain today. She is best known as […]
Students: apply for a landscape research bursary before the end of February
Why should I apply? Our landscape collections are pretty special. Read this overview of our landscape collections or search our combined library, archive and object catalogue. Take a look at reasons to use our landscape collections in your research and topic and resource ideas. But could I apply? Are you: A) A taught undergraduate or postgraduate student? B) […]
Going digital: Reading Museum and the MERL team up
The digital world is not coming, it is already here. In fact, it has been here for some time. Online shopping is king, Google knows where you live, almost everyone has a smartphone and the President-elect speaks primarily through Twitter. But being able to use smartphones, graphic software, websites, social media, apps, tablets, Windows, Macs and […]
Discovering the Landscape: From London traffic to an Italian Prisoner of War camp
Over the course of a large scale cataloguing project, many hundreds of items pass through your hands. Since acquiring the library and archive of the Landscape Institute in late 2013, we have made nearly 2500 books available to readers here at MERL. Added to this figure are metres of journals and pamphlets – and this is […]
Cricket farming Q&A with Newtri Foods (Part 2)
This is the second and final part of a Q&A with Matt Grant and Matt Hardy – Co-founders of Newtri Foods. Newtri Foods aims to be one of the first companies in the UK dedicated to the farming of crickets and the creation of cricket-based products (flour, protein bars and whole crickets) exclusively for human […]
Cricket farming Q&A with Newtri Foods (Part 1)
The founders of Newtri Foods talk to science engagement officer, Robyn Hopcroft, about cricket farming in Part 1 of a Q&A about their edible insect business. Edible insects have been touted as the next big thing in food. Even the United Nations has recognised edible insects as a “promising alternative for the conventional production of […]
Wellcome news! MERL has rural life down to a science
Our new Science Engagement Officer, Robyn Hopcroft, provides an update on the Wellcome Trust funded project: ‘Our Country Lives: Nutrition, Health and Rural England’. What is the relationship between rural life and science? In my role at MERL I’ll be investigating this question and finding new ways to work together with our visitors to explore […]
Is this a garden or a teeny tiny farm?
Science engagement officer, Robyn Hopcroft, provides an update on our sugar beet growing project. It’s National Gardening Week, and at The MERL we’re lucky enough to have a beautiful garden with a large lawn, herb garden, woodland area, and several community growing projects. It’s a great space for experimentation with different plant varieties and one […]
Discovering the Landscape: Student bursary winners announced
We are delighted to announce that Moa Carlsson and Tianyi Jiang have been awarded Landscape Student Travel Bursaries. The purpose of the two student travel bursaries is to enable students to access collections held at Reading related to landscape, including landscape design, management and architecture. Moa is a doctoral student at the Department of Architecture […]