Cabinet of Natural History

This research seminar is concerned with all aspects of the history of natural history and the field and environmental sciences. Unless stated otherwise, a regular programme of papers, discussions and events takes place over lunch on Mondays, 1pm to 2pm in Seminar Room 1.

For further details about upcoming events, or to be added to the mailing list for the Cabinet of Natural History, please contact Emma Kühnelt (ek659) or Theo Detweiler (td523).

Michaelmas Term 2026

12 October
Research presentations by the preceding Cabinet convenors
Melissa Altinsoy and John Schaefer (HPS, University of Cambridge)

Tuesday 20 October
Cabinet Fungus Hunt led by Nick Jardine
Please sign up here

26 October
Imaginaries of flight: avian knowledge, materiality and mobility in early modern Southeast Asia
Zhi-Yu Chen (HPS, University of Cambridge)

2 November
Errand objects and 'errors in the book of nature'
Lena Kasten (International Max Planck Research School, Berlin)

9 November
Epistemic insubordination: the natural history of coal and labourers' knowledge in the Danish Empire, c. 1770–1790
Niels Josva Balling (History, Aarhus University, Denmark)

16 November
Naming names: nomenclatural stability, decolonisation, and the 'missing' Singapore Herbarium type specimens
Jason Ng (Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, King's College London)

23 November
From boring to extraction: surveying, labour and the underground in colonial Assam and Burma, mid to late 19th century
Shreya Khaund (History, University of Warwick)

30 November
Avian encounters and colonial space-making in the Spanish Americas, 1750–1800
Robin Shrimpton (History, University of Cambridge)