Worlds of Wonder: citizens invited to help research the history of microscopy
An online crowdsourcing initiative of the FASoS MUSTS research group, Worlds of Wonder, was launched recently. Worlds of Wonder is part of an NWO-funded PhD project that invites citizens to help analyse illustrations in nineteenth-century microscopy journals and books – anyone can join and research the history of microscopy.
In the mid-nineteenth century, opticians started to produce relatively cheap microscopes and microscopy became a popular leisure activity. Many journals and handbooks on microscopy appeared, which were often richly illustrated. The aim of Worlds of Wonder is to learn more about these illustrations, how they were made and distributed, and how scientists and illustrators collaborated to produce them.
To this day, so many nineteenth-century publications on microscopy remain that they can hardly be analysed by just a handful of researchers. Therefore, the MUSTS researchers behind Worlds of Wonder, Lea Beiermann, Cyrus Mody and Raf De Bont, ask citizens to help them classify microscopy illustrations, assign keywords to the illustrations to make them searchable, and identify the people who made them.
You can join the project on Zooniverse or learn more about the history of microscopy on the Worlds of Wonder blog.
Also read
-
The Societal Impact Project
The Societal Impact Project stimulates students’ autonomous motivation to work on societal relevant problems. One of the topics this year is vaping.
-
How to increase vaccination rates: “It’s not a matter of convincing people”
Last year, at least eight people—the highest number since the 1960s—died of whooping cough in the Netherlands. Most of them were babies. Behind this tragic statistic lies a years-long trend: fewer and fewer parents are vaccinating their children against serious infectious diseases, which jeopardises...
-
Vaccine promotion policies for COVID-19
Two researchers from Maastricht University play a key role in translating research into vaccine policy recommendations for COVID-19: Timo Clemens, Associate Professor health policy and governance, and Inge van der Putten, Assistant Professor at the department of Health Services Research.
