Dean Sully, Lecturer in Conservation, UCL Institute of Archaeology.

Monday 16 January saw the latest event in the Institute of Archaeology’s popular 75th Anniversary programme with Liz Pye, Professor of Archaeological Conservation, providing an autobiographic picture of object biography, in her inaugural lecture.

This was a richly personal account of Liz’s intellectual journey from school girl archaeologist to what many consider to be conservation’s foremost teacher. This lecture centred on Liz’s joy of understanding objects and her pleasure in revealing the links between people and objects.

It was a long awaited opportunity for her colleagues, family and legion of past students to celebrate her achievements and her contribution to UCL and to the discipline of conservation.

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The Hainan gibbon, a small Chinese ape, is the world’s rarest primate. Lottie Davis describes the discussion about its survival at the UCL Grant Museum of Zoology on 24 May, the International Day for Biological Diversity.

The ‘Journey to find and save the world’s rarest primates’ event provided an opportunity for people from all backgrounds to come together and celebrate the International Day for Biological Diversity, as well as the International Year of Forests. Organised by gibbonologist Helen Chatterjee (UCL Genetics, Evolution and the Environment), the evening sought to raise the profile of the Hainan gibbon, the world’s rarest primate.

The evening was extremely thought provoking and provided a means to highlight the crises facing many relatively unknown species. With several people within the audience admitting to not knowing that the gibbon, a small ape living in China, was the most endangered ape, Helen Thirlway, the Director at International Primate Protection League (UK), reported that there are still many people who do not even know what a gibbon is.

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