Welsh museum secures £1.6m to work on research project with Natural History Museum

Nation.Cymru staff

Funding has been confirmed for a research project which will see a Welsh museum work with the Natural History Museum London to digitise the UK’s natural science collections.

Amgueddfa Cymru is working with UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and partners across the UK on the new project.

DiSSCo UK (Distributed System of Scientific Collections UK) is a £155m, 10-year national digitisation programme which will centralise natural science collections from across the UK on one portal.

The programme is funded through the UKRI Infrastructure Fund and delivered through AHRC in partnership with the Natural History Museum and over 100 partners across the UK.

Amgueddfa Cymru has secured £1.6m for the first phase to lead DiSSCo UK West, a new consortium who will work together to digitise hundreds of thousands of natural science specimens across Wales, south west England and Northern Ireland.

The confirmation of the funding marks the highest grant the museum has ever received for a research project, and acknowledges the level of expertise within Amgueddfa Cymru’s research team to lead the consortium.

Uniting expertise across three nations, the DiSSCo UK West consortium brings together Amgueddfa Cymru as Lead Hub, in collaboration with Bristol Museum & Art Gallery and Museum Development South West, National Museums NI and the National Botanic Garden of Wales.

Over an 18-month programme starting in September 2026, the partners will digitally capture around 500,000 botany and entomology specimens using hi-res multi camera imaging. These will include rare plant specimens from herbarium collections as well as insects, of which Amgueddfa Cymru has one of the largest collections in the UK.

The newly digitised data will make natural science collections openly accessible to researchers worldwide, supporting global research into biodiversity loss and climate resilience. Centralising this scientific data will make it far easier for scientists to access globally, rather than being held by individual museums.

International conservation efforts

Jenny Geroni, Head of Research at Amgueddfa Cymru and Project Lead for DiSSCo UK West said:”Our success in securing the £1.6m funding for this first phase follows a rigorous application process, and we’re incredibly proud to now be leading the DiSSCo UK West consortium. It’s a true testament to the hard work of our researchers at Amgueddfa Cymru and the expertise of our curatorial and conservation teams.

“Working with our consortia partners, we will aim to deliver a sustainable, inclusive model for natural science digitisation that strengthens the UK’s contribution to international conservation efforts.”

A dream come true

AHRC Executive Chair Professor Christopher Smith said: “For hundreds of years the UK has gathered and grown one of the world’s most comprehensive and diverse collections of scientific material in museums across the UK. It has been a long-held ambition to bring this collection together – and now this dream can come true.

“Over ten years, DiSSCo UK will deliver progress that would otherwise have taken over a century, including the creation of millions of newly digitised records and a network of around 100 collections from national museums and gardens, and universities to local collections that would never have had such access without it. And the outcomes of this £155m investment will offer exciting new opportunities for science as well as society.

“AHRC is proud to have led UKRI’s largest ever investment in the GLAM sector, yet another contribution to our leadership of the creative and cultural economy.”

The work to begin the digitisation will take place from September 2026, and roles and training opportunities will now be recruited to support the programme.

More information on Amgueddfa Cymru’s research work is available at museum.wales