Linda Andersson Burnett

Media and the Mind A beautifully illustrated argument that reveals notebooks as extraordinary paper machines that transformed knowledge on the page and in the mind. We often think of reason as a fixed entity, as a defin...

@bookscribbler.bsky.social book Media and the Mind. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Wonderful! Looking forward to your email. I can also send you a longer call for papers.

Do be in touch if you have something that fits the bill Elaine!

Abstract deadline: 20 March 2026
Full paper deadline: 20 May 2026 (can be negotiated)
Please submit queries and abstracts to: Laurence Talairach: laurence.talairach@univ-tlse2.fr and Linda Andersson Burnett: linda.andersson-burnett@idehist.uu.se
#MuseumHistory #skystorians

Topics can include: Women’s fieldwork strategies & negotiations of respectability; material practices of collecting, cataloging, and specimen preparation; popular science publications & their role in mediating women’s field science; the entanglement of gender, domesticity, and fieldwork identities

Picture of women on a beach John Leech, ‘The mermaids' haunt’. The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1854 - 1869. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. Picture Collection, The New York Public Library.

Call for Papers: Women’s Fieldwork and the Making of Nineteenth Century Natural History Collections
We seek articles to complete a special issue on women’s field collecting, and contributions to nineteenth century natural history for Nuncius.
#Histsci #NaturalHistory #WomensHistory #Fieldwork

Vast scale of overseas human remains held in UK museums decried by MPs and experts Exclusive: Guardian study finds UK museums hold more than 260,000 items of remains, often in sacrilegious ways

There is a long and bitter history here, that does not seem to be well-known despite a very substantial (and growing) historical scholarship. A short thread on scientific head hunting…

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

York History Department - Academic Jobs Uncover the past to define the future. We are seeking research-led historians to join our world-class, collaborative community. Discover career-defining opportunities within one of the UK’s most disti...

Permanent post in the history of the Middle East after 1800 at York!

Plus three fixed term posts

1) Medieval History 1100-1450

2) Modern China

3) Britain/Public History

Congratulations Katrina!

There is still time to register for tomorrow's seminar: Yunting Gu (28th Jan, 3-4, CET) Disputing the lacquer tree: Visual Evidence and Global Knowledge in the Early Modern World. Zoom link: instructingnaturalhistory@uu.se instructingnaturalhistory.com/events/yunti...
#skystorians #envhist #museums

Super excited about presenting my 🌱paper!!! Thank you Instructing Colonial Natural History!!! @lindaaburnett.bsky.social 🌿😊 🤩🙏

Where are Obama, Bush, Biden, Clinton, the CEOs of the companies that helped talked Trump down from Greenland, ANYONE with authority or market power who can command a microphone and back up the brave citizens of Minneapolis, and say this is morally wrong and an existential threat to the republic?

It highlights how instructions for identifying and shipping specimens enabled, and limited, knowledge across continents, and how Asian sources intersected with European taxonomy. #histsci #collecting

Focusing on figures such as John Ellis, Philip Miller, and Carl Linnaeus, it will show how economic ambition, visual evidence, written testimony, and institutional authority shaped botanical knowledge.

As lacquer was a valuable export from China and Japan, European naturalists asked whether it could be cultivated in colonial America to reduce reliance on Asian imports.

The talk explores an 18th-century scientific controversy over the identity of the lacquer (varnish) tree, a debate that connected Asia, Europe, and North America through texts, images, and plant specimens.

Yunting Gu (Fudan University/University of Cambridge) - Disputing the lacquer tree: Visual Evidence and Global Knowledge in the Early Modern World — Instructing Natural History This presentation investigates a scientific controversy over the identity of the lacquer (‘varnish’) tree in the 1750s, a dispute that linked Asia, Europe, and North America through the circulation of...

Seminar on colonial instructinons by Yunting Gu 28th of Jan, 3-4, CET (Zoom): Disputing the lacquer tree: Visual Evidence and Global Knowledge in the Early Modern World. Zoom link: instructingnaturalhistory@uu.se, Welcome! instructingnaturalhistory.com/events/yunti...
#skystorians #envhist #museums

Poster showing the seminar schedule. The image is of Louis XVI giving instructions

New seminars on Instructing Colonial Natural History 🌿 We can look forward to papers by Yunting Gu, Adriana Craciun and @nulybranch.bsky.social. For more info see instructingnaturalhistory.com (more info will be added). #skystorians #museums #collecting #histsci #envhist

Procedura di valutazione comparativa per titoli e colloquio per il conferimento di n. 1 incarico post-doc presso il Dipartimento di Filosofia - SSD PHIL-02/B - GSD 11/PHIL-02- Cod. Pica incarichipd202...

Work with me! 2-year postdoc (1+1) within COLUMN: Colonial Legacies of Universities: Materialities and New Collaborations (HORIZON_HORIZON-CL2-2024-HERITAGE-01-04). Topic: “Research of university botanical collections in relation to Italian and European colonialism”. Call at: shorturl.at/aurdS

There is currently 30% off selected 18th-c history titles by Yale University Press, including Race and the Scottish Enlightenment.

Mycket bra!

Congratulations Dr!

Instructing Natural History

The talk is part of the Instructing Natural History Program at Uppsala University. For more information about our activities please see: instructingnaturalhistory.com #histsci #skystorians #museums #collections #bookhistory

Anna is a researcher at Uppsala Uni. With a focus on materiality and practice, her research explores different perspectives on the history of botanical collections. She is currently employed at the Botanical Dep. of the Natural History Museum to work with the historical & miscellaneous collections.

This talk teases out the different meanings and uses of ’book’ in relation to interconnected historical collecting practices and formats (the herbarium/hortus siccus, inter-referencing, interfoliation, etc.), seeking to bring some clarity to their place in current historiographical discussions.

Instructions to travellers to collect plants in books, match both archival references to the practice and the widespread occurrence of pressed plants in early modern books. These instructions also echo early instructions of how to make a herbarium.

Although this is relevant for the collection of any organism or object, the role of books as collecting tools is uniquely relevant to the collection of plants.

Books have been essential to the conception and pursuit of collecting at a global scale since the early modern period. This is evident in the rich and growing body of scholarship exploring the versatility of paper technologies, chains of reference, (im)mutable mobiles and correspondence networks

Book used as a collecting tool. Image is author's own.

Don't miss! 🌿 Pocket Books and Floating Libraries: Books as Collecting Tools in Instructions to Travelers. Anna Svensson will discuss how books haven’t just described the natural world, they’ve also helped collect it. Wed. 10 Dec, 15:00–16:00 CET Zoom link, email: instructingnaturalhistory@uu.se

Uppsala Declaration

We all want to move on with our lives, yet the violence continues. The killing continues. The occupation continues. The colonisation continues. More than 9,000 Palestinian hostages are still in Israeli detention. /1