The Victorian art teacher and social reformer John Ruskin died in 1900, but his ideas remain deeply relevant today. In honour of his 200th birthday, the museum is hosting a symposium where experts on Ruskin, Victorian culture and the environment will discuss his views on science and natural history, and on the impact of industrialisation on people’s health and the world around them. Speakers will include Kate Flint (Southern California), Mark Frost (Portsmouth), Peter Garratt (Durham), Sandra Kemp (Director of the Ruskin Research Centre, Lancaster), Francis O’Gorman (Edinburgh), John Parham (Worcester) and Marcus Waithe (Cambridge). There will also be a brief introduction to Ruskin Land from John Iles and a tour of the museum by John Holmes (Birmingham).

At 6 in the evening, the conference will be followed by a public lecture by Fiona Stafford (Oxford) on ‘Ruskin’s Trees’.

These events are co-organised by the Diseases of Modern Life project, the European Research Council, the Constructing Scientific Communities project, the AHRC, the Nineteenth-Century Centre at the University of Birmingham, and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.