Miranda Lowe | |
---|---|
Occupation(s) | Natural historian Curator |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Natural history |
Institutions | Natural History Museum |
Miranda Constance Lowe CBE FLS FRSB is a British museum curator. She is principal curator of crustacea at the Natural History Museum, London and a founder member of Museum Detox.[1]
She has particular expertise in peracarida and coral taxonomy, and she manages the museum's collections in crustacea and cnidaria.[1] She has published work on the museum's collection of 182 glass sea creatures made by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka.
She is a committee member of NatSCA, the Natural Sciences Collections Association.[2]
In 2018 Lowe and Subhadra Das of the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy co-authored "Nature Read in Black and White: decolonial approaches to interpreting natural history collections",[3] described by the Linnean Society's head of collections as "eye-opening".[4] They went on to be founding members of Museum Detox, an organisation bringing together BAME museum workers in the UK.[5][6]
In July 2020 Lowe was appointed as a Trustee of York Museums Trust.[7]
In September 2020 she appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Museum of Curiosity, when her hypothetical donation to this imaginary museum was a moon jellyfish.[8]
In December 2020 she explained about bias in the fossil record within the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture about Planet Earth given by Christopher Jackson.[9] Four months later she was elected Chair of the Board of Trustees overseeing the United Kingdom arts diversity charity Culture&.[10]
In November 2020 she was included in the BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Power list 2020.[11]
In 2021, Lowe and Subhadra Das were awarded the Society for the History of Natural History President's Award. The citation said that "their efforts have together sent a clarion call to museums and heritage organisations to acknowledge colonial histories and to take action."[12]
Lowe was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for services to science communication and diversity in natural history.[13]