‘A Sense of Nature’, SHNH International Summer Meeting, University of Glasgow, 19-20 June 2025
‘A Sense of Nature’: SHNH International Summer Meeting, Lecture Theatre, Kelvin Hall, University of Glasgow, Glasgow
19th and 20th June 2025, with visits on Friday afternoon 20 June
The Society for the History of Natural History
is a diverse community of people united by an active interest in the study of natural history through time, believing that a greater awareness of how nature has been considered, documented, valued and exploited by societies and individuals worldwide leads to a deeper understanding and celebration of nature.
The Society is known for its friendliness and its meetings combine intellectual excellence with opportunities for an informal exchange of ideas. It is a focal point for the history of all aspects of natural history. This includes art, literature, biography and bibliography as well as investigative historical studies.
A Sense of Nature
The ‘sensory turn’ in a range of humanities and social sciences disciplines has led to innovative research exploring how sensory experiences shape cultural and historical narratives. Within natural history, the management of the senses has been instrumental in shaping our knowledge of and interactions with the natural world. The roles of sight, smell and taste in plant and animal identification, the place of smell and touch in modern museum galleries as gateways for public engagement, and our fascination with how natural things use their own senses to adapt to and thrive in their natural environments, all reflect the ways in which the senses, and knowledge of them, are integral to past and present navigation of the natural world.
This two-day international meeting will explore the intersections of the senses – including sight (vision), sound (hearing), smell (olfaction), taste (gustation) and touch (tactile perception) – with the history of natural history.
Download the 2025 SHNH Provisional Programme & Abstracts for ‘A Sense of Nature’.
Please register to attend through this Eventbrite link. Registration will close 6pm on 28th May 2025.
For this meeting we have welcomed papers from across the field which speak to any aspects of the history of natural history and speak to the conference theme. Speakers have been convened into sessions of related 20 minute papers with a shared session for questions at the end of each session. Please see the programme below.
Day One
10:00 Arrival and Registration
10:25 Introductions and Housekeeping
10:30 Panel 1
A Bird in the Hand: Painting feathers and Feather painting.
Victoria Dickenson, McGill Library and Collections, Montréal, Canada.
Sense and Suitability: Delimiting “Temperate” in Clime and Place.
Brooke Penaloza-Patzak, Dept. II at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany, and Research Associate at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (ifk), Vienna, Austria.
11:30 Break
12:00 Panel 2
Sound Worlds in German 19th-Century Natural History Texts.
Anne Hehl, Humboldt University, Berlin and Cardiff University, Wales.
Recording the sounds of nature.
Cheryl Tipp, British Library, England.
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Panel 3
Colours of Nature, Pleasure of Natural History: Blackberry Excursion of Mount School Girls.
JIANG Hong, 姜虹，Department of World History, Sichuan University, China and Durham University, England.
“This appears to be quite a new discovery, unknown to any naturalist”: Microscopy and the Illumination of Natural Knowledge in Georgian England.
Emily Whittingham, University of York, England.
15:00 Break
15:30 Panel 4
“This whole world of wild, natural perfumes”. Attention to the Olfactory in 19th-Century North-American Nature Writing.
Clara Muller, Independent Scholar, France.
Stinking Up the Land of Uz: Olfaction and Philology in Seventeenth Century Biblical Natural History.
Francis Taylor, University of York, England.
16:30 End of Day 1
17:00 Wine Reception
Hunterian Zoology Museum, University of Glasgow, Graham Kerr Building, Science Wy, Glasgow G12 8QQ.
18:30 All attendees to have left the museum
19:00 Conference Dinner
Fonn Mhor, Òran Mór, Byres Rd, Glasgow G12 8QX. https://oran-mor.co.uk/fonn-mor/.
Day Two
09:45 Arrival
10:10 Introductions and Housekeeping
10:15 Panel 5
Nose wisdom in the seventeenth-century East Indies.
Josephine Koopman, European University Institute, Florence, Italy.
Using sound in natural history displays – an exhibition case study.
Cam Sharp Jones, British Library, England.
11:15 Break
11:45 Panel 6
‘Tasting Andean Nature’: A Spanish physician and the transmission of indigenous medical knowledge (Peru, 1621).
Mariana Ladrón de Guevara Zuzunaga, Pablo de Olavide University, Seville, Spain.
Late-eighteenth sensory experiences of plants in the St Vincent Botanical Garden; examining the use of corporeal adverbs to describe plants by Alexander Anderson, and John Tyley’s picturesque botanical illustrations.
Dr Christina Welch, University of Winchester, England.
12:45 Concluding remarks
13:00 End of conference/Lunch
Optional
14:00 – 16:00 Tour of the museum collections
We will be offering multiple tour options, including Kelvin Hall Museum Stores Tour and GU Library Special Collections Visit.
For more information on the Society please see www.shnh.org.uk.
Archives of Natural History is the journal of the Society for the History of Natural History, publishing papers on the history and bibliography of all branches of natural history. For more information see https://www.euppublishing.com/loi/anh.
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