Oliver Zauzig studied geography and history at the Humboldt University of Berlin from 2002 to 2007. From 2004 until his graduation he was a student assistant at the Hermann von Helmholtz Centre for Cultural Technology in the project “Cabinets of Knowledge” (Object Portal of the Humboldt University). Subsequently, he worked as a research assistant in the DFG-funded project “University Collections in Germany. The Information System on Collections and Museums at German Universities”, in which from 2004 to 2010 information’s on current and historical university collections were compiled in an online freely accessible database. A follow-up project, also funded by the DFG, resulted from the intensive scientific examination of university collections. The research project “Material Models in Research and Teaching: Collection, Documentation and Investigation of Models in University Collections” was carried out from 2010 to 2012.

From May 2012 until May 2019, he has been a research assistant in the BMBF-funded Coordination Center for University Collections in Germany. His area of responsibility includes the strategic and infrastructural development of scientific collections as well as legal issues. From June 2019 to September 2022, he headed the coordination office.

He did his doctorate on the ‘Modellkammer’ of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, a historical (teaching) model collection that was singular in this form at German universities of the 18th century. His research questions aimed, among other things, at the practical handling and use of the model collection in the university curriculum of the 18th and 19th centuries, examining the level of the collection as well as the level of the individual objects. The publication is freely accessible online to all interested parties on the HU’s e-doc server at: https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/handle/18452/25722.

Oliver Zauzig is the central collections coordinator of the Humboldt-Universität since March 2022.

Location: Philippstr. 13, House 3, Room 121