Stockholm university
Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies

Seminar: Dolly Jörgensen

Seminar

Date: Thursday 6 November 2025

Time: 15.00 – 17.00

Location: Accelerator Art Hall

The Green Zone Seminar Autumn 2025 at Accelerator Art Hall.

Dolly Jörgensen, Stavanger. Extinction Remains: The challenge of displaying contemporary mass extinction.

Abstract
We are currently living through a major extinction event with vast numbers of species across the planet rapidly becoming extinct because of human actions, from climate change to habitat conversion to pollution. At least 322 vertebrates are known to have become extinct since 1500, and many more invertebrates and plants. The high number of species either recently extinct or facing imminent extinction and the great speed at which extermination is happening even exceeds the most well-studied extinction event—the dinosaur extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period. What remains after a species has become extinct and how can museums engage with those remains?

Because museums and galleries are one of the primary sites of public engagement in many types of environmental issues, including extinction, we need critical reflection on how they can be used to cultivate thinking about non-human species. In this talk I will discuss two types of remains of the extinct: the tangible bodily remains and the intangible stories that remain. Drawing on examples of extinct species on display at the Swedish Museum of Natural History and other examples in my new book Ghosts Behind Glass, I will discuss the challenges of curating both kinds of remains. Extinction remains have the potential to raise awareness of the connections between humans and nonhumans over time, and how they affect our culture.

Last updated: October 7, 2025

Source: Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies

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