Celebrating 50 Years of SMA
Society for Museum Archaeology Annual Conference 2025 to be held at Museum of Liverpool on 13th and 14th of November 2025
Call for Papers – Deadline Extended to 25th July 2025
The Society for Museum Archaeology (SMA) is seeking proposals for contributions to its 2025 conference: Celebrating 50 Years of SMA.
The conference will celebrate the successes of Museum Archaeology over the past 50 years and look forward to the possible challenges and opportunities over the next 50 years. Speakers who cannot attend on the day are welcome to submit their paper via a pre-recorded video presentation.
Ideas for contributions might include but do not have to be limited to:
- Celebrating Merseyside – a celebration of our hosts at the Museum of Liverpool through the archaeology from across the region.
- 50 Years of the SMA – Retrospectives that examine the impact and legacy of the SMA’s growth, objectives, activities and projects over the past 50 years
- Celebrating 50 years of Museum Archaeology – Celebrating the work and progress of Museum Archaeology more generally across the past 50 years. This can include but is not limited to:
- Development of sector guidance and professionalism
- Changes and advances in public engagement
- Significant discoveries and displays
- Development in care of collections
- Advancement of scientific and research techniques within archaeology and archaeological conservation
- The next 50 years: Challenges and Opportunities – Exploring the upcoming and potential challenges and opportunities for the next 50 years of museum archaeology. This can include but is not limited to:
- Digital archiving
- The growth of community archaeology
- The future of archaeological archives
- Growing and maintaining the sector’s workforce and skills
- Developing and engaging diverse audiences
- Advocating for archaeology, the sector and beyond.
We would be delighted to hear from anyone (including those who work or have engaged with museum archaeology and archaeological collections including museum professionals, conservators, students, researchers, and community groups) who wants to give a conference paper of 20 minutes in length. Please submit proposals for papers by filling out the form below and emailing it to Elsa Price (Conference Officer) at training@socmusarch.org.uk by the 31st of May 2025. If you have any queries or would like to talk through an idea before submitting a proposal, please contact Elsa.
Publication: SMA publishes the proceedings from its conference as a digital download, available from the SMA website. Previous editions are available here socmusarch.org.uk/publications/
All speakers are invited to submit their papers for publication in these volumes after the conference: the usual format is 1500 words and 6 images. After a number of years where publication has fallen behind, the SMA will catch up in 2024/25, so we ask that all potential speakers consider whether they will be able to contribute a paper when they submit a proposal. Development of the Journal in the future may result in opportunities for conference papers that are not submitted this year to be submitted for subsequent volumes.
Expenses: SMA welcomes conference papers presented by one or more speakers. However, please be aware that only one speaker per paper will be eligible to claim expenses incurred for travel and subsistence (in line with our expenses policy) and only one speaker per paper will be entitled to attend the day they are speaking at the conference free of charge.
SMA conference speakers may claim for the overnight stay away from home while attending the conference. Normally, only one night’s accommodation can be claimed for, unless a prior agreement has been made with the SMA’s Treasurer. Overnight stays may be claimed up to the following limits (including breakfast): £105.00. Please note that these rates are a maximum and every effort should be made to find accommodation at a lower cost. These limits do include VAT. If you book accommodation that exceeds these limits, you must pay the difference in cost yourself unless a prior agreement has been made with the SMA’s Treasurer.
Watch our Conference 2019 videos online!
Keynote:The Telling of Human Stories
Waiting in the Wings (digital archaeological archives)
Driving Community Engagement and Research: a vision for Watling Street
Numismatics, Norman England and other Tricky Issues
Is Disposal a participatory practice?
Experiencing the gods: Displaying and interpreting Romano-British religion in museums
How can I put this? Interpreting the Evil Eye for a modern audience
Watch our Conference 2018 videos online!
And the individual videos are:
Bristol’s Brilliant Archaeology: planning for all ‘event’ …ualities
Your Dig: York Archaeological Trust’s new Participatory Community Engagement Programme
Visitor perceptions of, and engagement with, British prehistory displays
Positive Action with a 3D Printer
Documentation and Curation of 3D Visualization Projects
Displaying the Dead: results of the Leeds Museum visitor survey
A new approach to rationalising archaeological shell
Charging Ahead: Exploring fees for the transfer of archaeological archives in museums in England
I like to move it, move it……into archive suitable boxes
Pottery Shop? What Pottery Shop? Re – thinking Corbridge from the base up
Improving Archaeological Reference Collections and Typologies
Archaeology matters: pass it on!
Forging a positive collaboration between Swindon Museum & Art Gallery & Cardiff University
Old Collections, New Questions: Researching the Roman collections of the Yorkshire Museum
Birmingham: rediscovering archaeology for a superdiverse city
Putting Cyprus on the Map: promoting the Cypriot archaeology collections at Museums Sheffield
Papyrus for the People at the Petrie Museum