The Things about Museums constitutes a unique, highly diverse collection of essays unprecedented in existing books in either museum and heritage studies or material culture studies. Taking varied perspectives and presenting a range of case studies, the chapters all address objects in the context of museums, galleries and/or the heritage sector more broadly. Specifically, the book deals with how objects are constructed in museums, the ways in which visitors may directly experience those objects, how objects are utilised within particular representational strategies and forms, and the challenges and opportunities presented by using objects to communicate difficult and contested matters. Topics and approaches examined in the book are diverse, but include the objectification of natural history specimens and museum registers; materiality, immateriality, transience and absence; subject/object boundaries; sensory, phenomenological perspectives; the museumisation of objects and collections; and the dangers inherent in assuming that objects, interpretation and heritage are ‘good’ for us.

Ctirad Uher is a C. Wilbur Peters Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

He earned his BSc in physics with the University Medal from the University of New South Wales

in Sydney, Australia. He carried out his graduate studies at the same institution under Professor H.

J. Goldsmid on the topic of ‘Thermomagnetic effects in bismuth and its dilute alloys’, and received

his PhD in 1975. Subsequently, Professor Uher was awarded the prestigious Queen Elizabeth

II Research Fellowship, which he spent at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research

Organization (CSIRO), National Measurement Laboratory (NML), in Sydney. He then accepted a

postdoctoral position at Michigan State University, where he worked with Profs. W. P. Pratt, P. A.

Schroeder, and J. Bass on transport properties at ultra-low temperatures.

Professor Uher started his academic career in 1980 as an assistant professor of Physics at the

University of Michigan. He progressed through the ranks and became full professor in 1989. That

same year the University of New South Wales awarded him the title of DSc for his work on transport

properties of semimetals. At the University of Michigan, he served as an associate chair of

the Department of Physics and subsequently as an associate dean for research at the College of

Literature, Sciences and Arts. In 1994, he was appointed as chair of physics, the post he held for the

next 10 years.

Professor Uher has had more than 45 years of research, described in more than 520 refereed

publications in the areas of transport properties of solids, superconductivity, diluted magnetic semiconductors,

and thermoelectricity. In the field of thermoelectricity, to which he returned during

the past 25 years, he worked on the development of skutterudites, half-Heusler alloys, modified

lead telluride materials, magnesium silicide solid solutions, tetrahedrites, and Molecular Beam

Epitaxy (MBE)–rown thin films forms of Bi2Te3-based materials. He has written a number of

authoritative review articles and has presented his research at numerous national and international

conferences as invited and plenary talks. In 1996, he was elected fellow of the American Physical

Society. Professor Uher was honored with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of

Pardubice in the Czech Republic in 2002, and in 2010 was awarded a named professorship at the

University of Michigan. He received the prestigious China Friendship Award in 2011.

Professor Uher supervised 16 PhD thesis projects and mentored numerous postdoctoral researchers,

many of whom are leading scientists in academia and research institutions all over the world.

Professor Uher served on the Board of Directors of the International Thermoelectric Society. In

2004–2005, he was elected vice president of the International Thermoelectric Society and during

2006–2008 served as its president.