The History of Science at Tūhura Otago Museum

Dr Rosi Crane is Tūhura Otago Museum's Honorary Curator of History of Science. By examining the ways specimens were acquired—often through swapping and exchanging with other museums—she is able to tell rich stories about the Museum's collection, its early collectors and curators, and its role in the global network of natural history museums.

The Otago Museum, during its early years, was part of a worldwide exchange system that connected it with other institutions, expanding its collection and knowledge base. Dr Crane's research places the Museum within this international context, highlighting its contributions to the broader field of natural history.

Her work has also helped to shed light on the history of scientific practices in New Zealand and how they evolved. This ongoing research continues to inform our understanding of how early scientific institutions shaped the collections and curatorial practices that define Tūhura Otago Museum today.

You can see some of Dr Crane's research here:

Selected Publications

Crane, Rosi 2025 'Natural History Trading with Tūhura Otago Museum, Dunedin, New Zealand, c1860–1890s'. New Zealand Journal of History 59(1):79-97

Crane, Rosi 2024 'Women naturalists in Tūhura Otago Museum, Dunedin'. Journal of New Zealand Studies NS37 (2024), 47-63

Rawlence, Nicholas J., Crane, Rosi, Burns, Emma and Fleury, Kane 2024 Mounted specimen of Falkland Islands wolf (Dusicyon australis) in Tūhura Otago Museum: X-ray imaging and additional historical information. Archives of Natural History, 51(1):177-182

Crane, Rosi 2024 'The well-travelled octopus: from Dunedin to Dublin in 1886' Journal of Natural Sciences Collections 12:96-104

Crane, Rosi 2022 'Rivalry and Cooperation: Julius von Haast's influence on the Otago Museum' Canterbury Museum Bulletin 11:47-60

Crane, Rosi 2022 'A better day dawned for biology': T. J. Parker, New Zealand Huxleyite. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 91:262–269

Crane, Rosi, Labrum, Bronwyn and Wanhalla, Angela 2020 'Introduction: Museum histories in Aotearoa New Zealand: intersections of the local and the global' Museum History Journal 13(1):1-7

Crane, Rosi 2020 'What were they thinking? Tracing evolution in the Otago Museum, 1868-1936'. Museum History Journal 13(1):61-79

Crane, Rosi and Gill, B.J. 2018 William Smyth (1838-1913), a commercial taxidermist of Dunedin, New Zealand. Archives of natural history 45(2):292-308

Crane, Rosi 2017 'Rich Pickings: the intellectual life of Josephine Gordon Rich (1866-1940).' Journal of New Zealand Studies 24: 57-71

Crane, R 2017 'Show and tell: TJ Parker and late nineteenth-century science in Dunedin'. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 47(1):61-66

Crane, Rosi 2015 'A 'strange fauna': T.J. Parker (1850-1897) and the creation of zoological knowledge in Otago'. New Zealand Journal of History 49(2):60-80

Crane, Rosi 2015 'Creating Parker & Haswell's A Textbook of Zoology (1897)'. Script & Print 39(4):221-240

Crane, Rosi 2015 'Whale Tales' chapter in The Lives of Colonial Objects ed Annabel Cooper, Lachy Paterson, & Angela Wanhalla. Otago University Press, 2015

Crane, Rosi 2013 'A Dangerous Visionary'? The lectures of evolutionist TJ Parker'. Journal of New Zealand Studies 15:36-49