This research seminar is concerned with all aspects of the history of natural history and the field and environmental sciences. The regular programme of papers and discussions takes place over lunch on Mondays. In addition, the Cabinet organises a beginning-of-year fungus hunt and occasional expeditions to sites of historical and natural historical interest, and holds an end-of-year garden party.
- Cabinet of Natural History publications
- See the news archive for photos and reports from Cabinet events
Seminars are held on Mondays at 1pm in Seminar Room 2 unless otherwise stated.
For further details about upcoming events, or to be added to the mailing list for the Cabinet of Natural History, please contact Mika Hyman.
Michaelmas Term 2024
14 October
Tom Banbury (HPS, University of Cambridge)
A plague from on high? Comets, disease and meteorology in late medieval England
The appearance of comets was often considered to presage momentous events on Earth, such as the deaths of kings, defeat in battle, and oncoming natural disasters. With the arrival of the Black Death in the 14th century, comets and other fiery phenomena were co-opted as one of many ways of predicting the spread of the disease. However, there is more to the association between shooting stars and pestilence than simply ominous signs.
Building on the work of Sara Schechner, I explore the relationship between cometary appearances and medicine in the late medieval period, analysing what learned authorities and popular culture considered comets to be formed from, and how this related to the spread of disease. While the intersections between health and astronomy have mostly been examined from the perspective of astrological medicine and iatromathematics, this episode in the history of the Plague suggests strong links between the material elements of meteorology, and of the human body.
21 October
Hasok Chang (HPS, University of Cambridge)
Re-enacting past experiments: how and why
In the second part of the joint event with AD HOC (the history of chemistry reading group) Hasok Chang will perform some experiments (Sulzer's experiment, the making of the Voltaic pile, and the silver tree experiment) with a small group of participants.
28 October
Anna Simon-Stickley (Max Planck Institute)
'Where stones remained silent, plants spoke': practising historical biogeography in 19th-century Egypt
How do you write history using plants? And why? This talk will look at how scholars in 19th-century Egypt collected, explored, and understood the various traces that plants had left in Egypt's history. Egyptologists such as Ahmed Kamal and Flinders Petrie plucked ancient plants from tombs and collected plant names, while botanists traced the geographic origins of various Egyptian plants and scoured ancient gardens for remnant vegetation. Taking into consideration Egypt's changing agriculture, this talk will also explore how exploring the links between agriculture and civilization did not remain between book covers and inside lecture halls.
4 November
Cabinet Fungus Hunt
11 November
Grace Exley (University of Leeds and Oxford Natural History Museum)
'Indeed it is the thing itself': women and visual culture in the Earth Sciences, 1813–1850
The Earth Sciences are visual sciences. To reconstruct the prehistoric Earth, capture phenomena, and represent the creatures whose remains they unearthed, geologists relied on images – which were often created by women. There exists little scholarly work on this crucial aspect of 19th-century geology, and even less on women's contributions. Yet many women were accomplished scientific illustrators, who even experimented with cutting-edge techniques like lithography. This paper addresses the lack of historical recognition of women's artistic roles. It recovers these women's labour, arguing that their illustrative work not only required skill and scientific knowledge, but shaped the visual communication of geology.
18 November
William McMahon (Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge)
The first plants changed the planet and they used mud to do it
25 November
Jens Amborg (Uppsala University)
The voyage of the sheep from Tibet: animal breeding in the 18th-century French Empire
In 1766, the naturalist Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton was commissioned by the French state to conduct breeding experiments to improve the French sheep population. With his country's colonial network put at his disposal, he received live sheep from England, Spain, Morocco and, most spectacularly, Tibet. While colonial botany has received much well-deserved attention in recent scholarship, we know considerably less about the role of animal breeding in colonial natural history. By focusing on the voyage of the sheep brought from Tibet to France, this paper explores the animal side of science and empire.
2 December
Fiona Roberts (Cardiff University and Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales)
Ginger as storied matter: decolonisation and display in Amgueddfa Cymru's Economic Botany collection
Exploring the life story of a ginger specimen within Amgueddfa Cymru's Economic Botany collection, this talk will trace an individual plant's journey through varied natural history display spaces.
Originally from India, the ginger specimen travelled to Wales in 1939 from London's Imperial Institute, becoming part of an exhibition, 'Plants in the Service of Man'. This exhibition aimed to 'relay the importance of botany to the everyday lives of the Welsh public' (Hyde 1939), and represented ginger and the world using particular practices and narratives. This talk explores the relationship between botanical forms used to display ginger – whether wax models, herbarium sheets, dioramas or living plants – and the situated narratives emerging from this – representations of species, biogeography and cultures.
Finally, this talk explores how taking a naturecultural (Haraway 2003) approach to display reveals how plants like ginger can both resist and become collaborators in curation. Looking forwards, it considers how this relates to decolonising museum practice, providing clues to move past enduring imperial logics in evolving naturecultural worlds.