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.
Unless stated otherwise, all presentations take place on Mondays at 1pm in Seminar Room 1. To join virtually, please email Melissa Altinsoy (ma2019) or John Schaeffer (jrs232).
Please note that there will be no Cabinet sessions on 4 May and 25 May due to the bank holidays.
Easter Term 2026
Thursday 7 May
Natural History Humanities Showcase at Cambridge University Library
Join us for a special showcase of Natural History Humanities material from the University Library collections. The session will begin with several short lightning talks from affiliates of the Collections Connections Communities Strategic Research Initiative, followed by an opportunity to ask questions and explore the diverse items on display at your own pace.
Please note that this event will take place on a Thursday, from 1pm to 2pm in the Old Manuscripts Room (UL).
11 May
Richard Luke Fallon (Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge)
Collotypes of graptolites: women, objectivity and judgement in Edwardian palaeontology
A Monograph of British Graptolites (1901–1918), written by Gertrude Elles and illustrated by Ethel Wood under the editorship of Charles Lapworth, was a landmark in biostratigraphy. Wood's camera lucida illustrations of the tiny titular fossil invertebrates, reproduced by the photomechanical collotype process, were key to the book's utility and the product of much experimentation, strain, and expense. Speaking to scholarship on women in geology and on scientific illustration, especially contested work on 'mechanical objectivity' and 'trained judgement', this paper will argue that Elles and Wood's Monograph was an opportunity for early professional women to harness and promulgate what were seen as newly exacting methods and tools in palaeontology. Their highly specialised work would have a global – and very practical – influence on emergent ideas about deep time and palaeontology's role in resource extraction.
18 May
Anna Bruins (University of Warwick)
Plant, planter, planted: new perspectives on bioprospecting under the Dutch East India Company (1600–1700)
Among historians of science, the instrumentalisation of natural knowledge under colonial trading companies such as the Dutch East India Company (VOC) has recently come under increased scrutiny. In these studies, humans are usually taken to be the planters, and crops the things that are being planted. This presentation reconsiders this conventional narrative. It will be argued that the dichotomy between planter and planted appears to have been experienced with much more ambiguity by those who travelled and produced natural knowledge under the VOC. Drawing from travel accounts from around the Company's network, including the Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, and the Banda Islands, this presentation foregrounds the marks left on Dutch colonial plantation efforts by an eclectic range of nonhumans – from deviant baboons, to defiant pigeons, to divine planters.
1 June
Anaïs Walsdorf (University of Warwick)
Ancient slags and steel needles: metallurgy and colonial archaeology in the nineteenth century
As European archaeologists excavated ancient sites in the nineteenth century, they uncovered histories of metallurgical practice. This paper examines the relationship between the development of the metallurgical and archaeological sciences in the nineteenth century. John Percy, known as 'the father of English metallurgy' worked closely with archaeologists to chemically analyse the properties of ancient metals. In some cases, this led to the reopening of ancient mines to exploit them with newer, more efficient technologies. Ideas of ancient materials and technological progress tangled with ideas of race and civilisation as Percy himself participated in discussions regarding the periodization of the Three Age System. Archaeologists and metallurgists debated which metals and technological processes formed the line between savagery and civilisation. This paper problematizes the history of the metallurgical sciences, revealing deep ties with racial sciences and technological measures of man which persist in the historical crease.
8 June
Beth Kidd (University College London)
Misreading species: botanical identification and literary interpretation (1660–1749)
15 June
Katherine Arnold (University of Liverpool)
Friedrich Welwitsch's Angolan botanical collection: ownership and the law in nineteenth-century natural history
In 1872, Austrian collector Friedrich Welwitsch died in London, leaving behind a will which aimed to distribute his widely respected collection of plants. Though the will stated that the study set of his collections be left to the British Museum (Natural History), the expedition had been formally sponsored by the Portuguese government to investigate their colony of Angola. Upon realizing their scientific value, the King of Portugal brought a lawsuit against the British Museum, with Kew Gardens entering in support of the Portuguese. But what was the study set and why was it so valuable that it drew the most powerful botanical institutions in Britain into a prolonged legal battle? This paper will firstly investigate the concept of a study set and will argue that it is more than just a collection of plant specimens. Instead, it is a collection ecology: an ecosystem of biological material, correspondence, diaries, labels, scientific instruments, and much more. The value of the study set was not simply in the number of rare and unique plant specimens it contained; those specimens would be rendered valueless without the attendant paper data that botanists found essential to support taxonomic claims. Secondly, it will examine in detail the differing claims to the study set by the British Museum, the Portuguese government, and Kew Gardens, revealing Welwitsch's deeply strained relationships with all three interest groups over the perceived importance of his Angolan botanical collection. When we look at collections through this lens, we can begin to unravel the social, political, and environmental entanglements that defined collections, collectors, institutions, and even nations in nineteenth-century science.