SHNH – Society for the History of Natural History Meetings 2025

SHNH is holding a number of events in 2025 including its international summer meeting on ‘The Sense of Nature’, June 19-20.

• The Sense of Nature, SHNH Summer Meeting, Glasgow, June 19-20
  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. 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.
  
  
• SHNH AGM 2025

 

• SHNH Early Career Researcher Symposium, March 2025
  We were delighted to host an Early Career Researcher Symposium in March, 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builds on the Society’s already successful annual William T. Stearn Student Essay Prize, awarded to the best original, unpublished essay in the history of natural history, which is open to undergraduate and postgraduate students worldwide.