SHNH Early Career Researcher Symposium showcasing research into Natural History. Thursday 22 February 2024 online 09.15-17.45 GMT
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.
We are delighted to announce that in 2024 we are again hosting an Early Career Researcher Symposium, an event dedicated expressly to showcase research into the history of natural history being done by doctoral and early career researchers across the globe. This builds on the Society’s already successful annual William T. Stearn Student Essay Prize, awarded to the best original, unpublished essay in the history of natural history, which is open to undergraduate and postgraduate students worldwide, and the inaugural ECR event held in 2023.
The Eventbrite link for registration is: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/early-career-researcher-symposium-2024-tickets-791991827877?aff=oddtdtcreator
For this symposium we have welcomed papers from across the field which speak to any aspects of the history of natural history. The speakers have been drawn from individuals registered for PhD programmes or within 3 years of being awarded their doctorate.
Speakers have been convened into sessions of related 15-20 minute papers with a shared session for questions at the end of each session. Please see the programme below.
Programme Download programme
9:15am Welcome
9:30am – 11am Session One
Knowledge as de/stabilization of colonial actor-networks: altering ontologies of natural history in the works of Dr. Francis Buchanan-Hamilton
Pranav M, University of Hyderabad
Observe de novo on the minute: life forms in the thinking of Philip Henry Gosse (1810-1888) and popular microscopy in nineteenth-century Britain
Xiao-Tian Sheltia Zhang, Tsinghua University
Intermediaries betwixt media: digital repositories, knowledge production and the botanical collections of Rudolph F. Hohenacker
Sujeet George, Max Weber Stiftung in New Delhi, India
Break
11:30am – 1pm Session Two
When sciences meet arts: animal sculptures and scientific illustrations in 16th-century Florence : an approach
Charline Bessiere, EPHE-PSL, Paris
‘Buffon, whom I dip into now and then in the winter’: representations of natural history in Romantic-Period satire
Sara Cole, Lancaster University
From the classroom to the exhibition room: continuity and rupture in the use of Doctor Auzoux’s botanical models
Diane Courtin, PhD student, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle
Lunch
2:00pm – 3:30pm Session Three
William John Burchell’s Brazilian collection (1825-1830) at the Economic Botany Collection (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)
Patrícia Gomes da Silveira, Royal Holloway, University of London
The Dutch East India Company’s knowledge and management of elephants in Early Modern Ceylon (Sri Lanka)
Pichayapat Naisupap, Leiden University
Chronicles of the plumes: a visual journey through the natural history of blue macaws
Thabata Tosta, University of Porto
Break
4:00pm – 5:30pm Session Four
Nature in the vicinity: field trips, Bowu studies, and the emergence of scientific pedagogy in Republican China
Jia Yu, University of Cambridge
Housing animals after the Hagenbeck revolution: zoo architecture and the intersection of the multi-species labour at South Africa’s National Zoo, c.1932-1941
Mia Uys, The University of Cape Town
The natural history and domestication experiments of Judge John Dean Caton, 1864-1887
Taylor Michael Bailey, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
5:30-5:45 – Closing Remarks
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.
Registered Charity no. 2103555 in England and Wales