Prof. Dr. Dr. Joris Peters hands over office as Director General

Prof. Dr. Dr. Joris Peters hands over his position as Director General of the Bavarian State Collections of Natural History to Prof. Dr. Jörg Overmann

Since his appointment as Director General of the Bavarian State Collections of Natural History (Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns SNSB) in 2022, Prof. Peters has been committed to restructuring the SNSB with a view to its future admission to the Leibniz Association. He paved the way for the implementation of important infrastructural and strategic measures. Under his leadership, the independent expert committees provided significant impetus for innovative research ideas, collection development, and new ways of transferring knowledge. Prof. Peters was also committed to establishing the SNSB Core Facilities as a cross-collection research infrastructure. The technical and scientific development of the collections benefits significantly from their service and expertise, for example in genomics, biodiversity informatics, and 3D analytics. Finally, he was particularly keen to improve internal networking between the collections and museums in order to generate synergies.

“It has been an honor to lead the Bavarian State Collections of Natural History and to work together to achieve significant progress in interdepartmental collection and research work, internal communication, public relations, and, last but not least, in the self-image of this institution. I have always been driven by my enthusiasm for the scientifically and socially important natural history heritage. I am now handing over this task to my successor, Prof. Dr. Jörg Overmann, whom I have known and valued for many years as an excellent scientist and chairman of the SNSB Advisory Board. He brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the table and is exactly the right person to take the SNSB forward on its path to becoming part of the Leibniz Association,” said Prof. Joris Peters.

However, the State Collection for Paleoanatomy in Munich and LMU München have reason to celebrate: as head of the SPM department and holder of the Chair of Paleoanatomy, Domestication Research and History of Veterinary Medicine, Prof. Peters will remain in the research world until next spring. There, he will be able to continue his work on his collection and research projects, which focus on human-animal-environmental relationships in the ancient cultures of Eurasia and Africa and the history of the domestication of our pets.

Contact

Hannah Rauscher-Spiess
Head of Communications
Menzinger Str. 71, 80638 Munich, Germany
Email: rauscher-spiess@snsb.de
Tel.: +49 (0)89 17861 119