THURSDAY 12 NOVEMBER 2026
5.30PM TO 7PM
LOCATION: Hosted in-person at Cambridge University Library. Directions
TICKETS: Tickets are free but booking is essential. This event is for adults but children are welcome when accompanied by an adult. Please book a free ticket for each adult and child attending. Babes in arms do not require a ticket.
ACCESSIBILITY: Accessible parking, accessible toilets, step-free access and hearing loop are available.
Riverflies: Poetry, citizen science and women in natural history
As part of the exhibition, Living Water: Poetry, Art and the Fight for Clean Rivers, join us for an event exploring our relationship with riverflies past and present – sensitive bioindicators of the quality of the ‘living water’ on which both their life and ours depends.
Mark Wormald (exhibition curator) will explore how the annual emergence of mayflies – greatly anticipated in the fly-fishing year – was celebrated by Ted Hughes in his poetry. WildFish will talk about their SmartRivers citizen science project to protect wild fish and their habitats by monitoring riverflies.
Then we travel back in time, looking at how the digitisation of museum’s natural history specimens is uncovering the role of women as naturalists and collectors. Louise Berridge will speak about her research on the Natural History Museum’s riverflies and Zoe Simmons will reflect on the possibilities opened up by mass digitisation of natural history specimens.
This event is being hosted in collaboration with the Collections–Connections–Communities Natural History Humanities initiative.