Key Points
- The University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford will lead a new partnership to digitise more than 1.1 million natural history specimens for climate and biodiversity research.
- Cambridge has been awarded £772,000 for the project, which is part of DiSSCo UK, a £155 million national programme to digitise and connect the UK’s natural science collections.
- The project will create the Central England DiSSCo UK Hub over the next two years.
- The hub will support 23 museums and herbaria as they prepare collections for a digital future.
- The aim is to contribute 1,195,419 specimen records to the national dataset using high-throughput imaging and AI.
- The resulting data will also be made freely available through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.
- The project focuses on British plants and insects collected over the last two centuries, with a particular emphasis on East and Southeast England.
- The universities’ collections together steward more than 12 million specimens, the largest natural science collection in the UK outside London and Edinburgh.
- The partnership includes university museums, county collections, and regional institutions across central England.
- AHRC says DiSSCo UK is a 10-year national programme designed to make around half of the UK’s natural science collections digitally accessible over the decade.
Cambridge (Cambridge Tribune) July 15, 2026 – Cambridge and Oxford have launched a major collaboration to digitise more than 1.1 million biological records, with the universities saying the work will strengthen climate research, biodiversity monitoring and conservation planning across central England.
As reported by Cambridge’s research news team, the project brings together the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford under the Central England DiSSCo UK Hub, which will support 23 museums and herbaria and connect collections that have long been held in different institutions. The project is funded through DiSSCo UK, a £155 million national programme to digitise and connect the UK’s natural science collections, and Cambridge’s share of the funding is £772,000.
The announcement says the hub will help digitise 1,195,419 specimen records over two years, using technologies such as high-throughput imaging and AI. The final data will feed into a national dataset and be made freely available through GBIF, giving researchers worldwide access to the records.
Why does the project matter for climate research?
The project is focused on British plants and insects collected over the last two centuries, with a particular emphasis on East and Southeast England. That region has seen major environmental change, including wetland drainage, agricultural intensification and rapid urbanisation, making its collections especially valuable as a historical reference point.
Professor Sam Brockington, the project lead at Cambridge, said the partnership would “deliver digitised UK biodiversity data at scale” and help build digitisation capacity across England’s central belt. He added that the work would embed digitisation within regional communities dealing with biodiversity loss and climate resilience. The project aims to give scientists a high-resolution historical baseline for changes in species turnover and flowering times linked to climate change.
Who is involved in the hub?
The partnership unites four of the UK’s largest university collections: the Cambridge University Herbarium, the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, the Museum of Natural History at the University of Oxford, and the Oxford University Herbaria. It also extends through a node-network running from Gloucestershire to Suffolk, with digitising nodes at Norwich Castle Museum and the University of Leicester Herbarium.
Other organisations in the wider network include preparatory nodes and nine further sites that will receive online training and support, forming a shared community of practice. Dr Stuart Desjardins of the University of Leicester Herbarium said the three university herbaria in the project represent a strong continuity in British botanical science and help underpin major floras of the British Isles.
What did project leaders say?
Jack Ashby, the co-lead and assistant director of the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, said the collections are already being used in research and active conservation projects by major NGOs. He said direct work with county collections would help integrate digitisation into regional biodiversity monitoring and recovery strategies.
AHRC Executive Chair Professor Christopher Smith said UK natural science collections have been built over centuries and that DiSSCo UK is designed to bring them together digitally. He said the 10-year programme would create millions of new digital specimen records and connect around 100 collections, including national museums, universities and local collections. He also said AHRC is leading UKRI’s largest ever investment in the Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums sector.
What is DiSSCo UK?
DiSSCo UK is a 10-year national programme funded through the UKRI Infrastructure Fund and delivered through the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council in partnership with the Natural History Museum and more than 100 partners across the UK. Its goal is to make around half of the UK’s 140 million natural science items digitally accessible over the next decade.
The programme also aims to mobilise existing data, create millions of new specimen records and bring previously unpublished collection information into wider use. According to the programme description, the wider purpose is to strengthen digital capacity and increase the impact of collections data on major issues such as food security and biodiversity loss. The Cambridge-Oxford hub is one part of that broader national effort.
Background of the development
This project reflects a wider move across the UK scientific collections sector to digitise specimens that have often only been accessible in person. Natural history collections preserve evidence of past ecosystems, species distribution and environmental change, making them valuable for long-term climate and biodiversity studies.
The focus on East and Southeast England also reflects the scale of environmental pressure in that region over the past two centuries. By combining imaging, digital cataloguing and data-sharing through international platforms like GBIF, the project aims to turn museum holdings into a working research resource rather than a static archive.
Prediction of impact on researchers
For researchers, the biggest effect is likely to be faster access to large volumes of verified biodiversity data without the need to travel to multiple collections. That should make comparative studies on climate change, species decline and habitat recovery more efficient, especially for scientists working on British plants and insects.
For conservation bodies and regional museums, the project may improve collaboration, training and digital readiness across the sector. For the wider public and policy community, the main impact will be better evidence for planning biodiversity recovery and climate adaptation, based on historical records rather than isolated snapshots.
