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Linda Andersson Burnett

@lindaaburnett.bsky.social
3.5K followers 1.3K following 223 posts

Researches the Scottish Enlightenment, history of racism, Linnaean natural history, and collecting. Senior Lecturer & mum of 3. instructingnaturalhistory.com

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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
There is still time to register for @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social seminar "Empires of Extinction in the Anthropocene" on Tuesday, 15-16 CET (abstract below). For Zoom link please email: instructingnaturalhistory@uu.se #skystorians #histsci #envhist
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The Instructing Colonial Natural History Seminar Series is back and we have a stellar line up: @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social, 6 Oct; @cberiksen.bsky.social, 28 Oct; Jim Endersby, 25 Nov; and Ma. Mercedes G. Planta, 9 Dec. All seminars are on Zoom, 15-16 CET
Poster for Instructing Colonial Natural History, Autumn Term 2026 seminar series. The design uses an 1785 watercolour by Sarah Stone showing the interior of Sir Ashton Lever’s Museum in Leicester Square, London: a dark green natural-history collection crowded with display cabinets, birds, shells, antlers and other specimens, with green curtains opening onto receding galleries and a large elephant on the right. Four online seminars are listed: Sadiah Qureshi, 6 October; Christoffer Basse Eriksen, 28 October; Jim Endersby, 25 November; and Ma. Mercedes G. Planta, 9 December. All seminars are on Zoom, 15.00–16.00 CET. Registration: instructingnaturalhistory@uu.se
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
On the 17th of August 1803, Enlightenment speculation on racial variety ran aground on Wreck Reek, just off Australia's north eastern coast. This is just one of a surprising range of unlikely settings in which @lindaaburnett.bsky.social and I pursue the intellectual history of race & Enlightenment.
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Today’s class ‘the empire of Enlightenment’ and an opportunity to engage with the iconography of Captain Cook, and reinvention by First Nations artists.
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Matthew L Reznicek @drreznicek.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Visiting fellowship for PhD students in medical humanities at Upsala www.uu.se/en/centre/me...
uu.se
Call for applications: Visiting PhD-student position in Medical Humanities, Uppsala University, spring semester 2027 – Centre for Medical Humanities (CMH) – Uppsala University
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Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco @joshpizpom.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
EXC: 90 programmes in Edinburgh University's College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences are to be closed. The casualties, which include 48 language and literature programmes, will be 'taught out', w/ no admissions after 2027. @heraldscotland.bsky.social www.heraldscotland.com/news/2655839...
heraldscotland.com
Ninety programmes to close at leading university as savings plan takes shape
According to the document, a total of 90 programmes will be “taught out” over the next several years, including 48 in the School of Language.
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Australia's Department of Trade lists our first colonial exports: whaling (1791), coal (1801), & wool (1807). Yet one 'export' predates them: the skulls of First Nations people (1790). Australia's first trade would endure for another 160 years. Read more here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Enlightenment enslavement and the Indigenous dead: trafficking slaves and skulls in the early colonisation of Australia
In 1787, as the First Fleet made its way across the Atlantic to colonise Australia, it traversed an ocean made synonymous with the violently forced mobility of enslavement, then reaching an unprece...
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Why did medicine and moral philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment give rise to a global and colonial science of race? Find out here! @lindaaburnett.bsky.social and me in History of Science, Volume 64 Issue 3, September 2026. Out now, open access: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.....
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Medieval and Early Modern Orients (MEMOs) @memorients.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Deadline for this post at the University of Limerick is THIS WEEK on Friday, 8/14! #earlymodern #medievalsky
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
If we want to sincerely weigh #Enlightenment’s #legacy in #Australia or #globally, we should begin here in tracing the global flows of peoples, bodies, and ideas in the era #colonisation and #ScientificEnslavement. muse.jhu.edu/pub/275/arti...
yalebooks.yale.edu
Race and the Scottish Enlightenment
How colonialism shaped the Scottish Enlightenment’s conception of race and humanity   In the decades after 1750, an increasing number of former medical st...
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Three-fingered Jack was Jack Mansong, killed in 1781 while resisting slavery in Jamaica. His own #head and hand was #preserved in spirits “for the satisfaction of the curious”. #Pemulwuy and #JackMansong were enslaved in perpetuity because they resisted. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
So, when the English artist James Ward drew “2 heads of Botany Bay Men” in London’s Royal College of Surgeons in 1818, one of whom was probably Pemulwuy, he could describe him as a “chief of marauding predators, a kind of Three-fingered Jack of Botany Bay.” www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
The #resistance to colonisation, and the violence of colonial repression, demonstrate the same agency historians identify among the enslaved. Their resistance to the prerogatives of white colonial power however, was frequently characterised as ‘savagery’ illustrative of imposed #racial designations.
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Those whose remains were taken by #violence, or #collected by #theft, were not passive #victims. They were dismembered in this global flow of #EnlightenmentScience because they resisted. Pemulwuy, a Bidjigal warrior who led Dharug resistance against colonial expansion is one example.
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
The collection and transportation and display of #HumanRemains was a feature of “scientific head hunting” in service to the Enlightenment aspiration to catalogue the #varieties of #humankind in #taxonomies of #race. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
We argue “The #collection of the Indigenous dead could never match the volume of forced mobility of the #trans-Atlantic slave trade, nor its remorselessly #monetised suffering”, yet both slaves and skulls were #violently made globally #mobile without consent. yalebooks.yale.edu/2025/11/20/h...
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Enlightenment in Australia can be gauged by the practice of “scientific enslavement of the Indigenous dead”. From 1788 the the human remains of #Indigenous peoples were taken without #consent to enrich in status, power, and reputation collectors and institutions. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
As @lindaaburnett.bsky.social and I argue, #colonial Australia was a vector of Enlightenment, not in spite of #enslavement but because of it. #Slavery and slave trading was integral to Europe’s Enlightenment and its global reach, not least in Australia. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
A former #Australian PM recently wrote, “[f]rom the outset [1788], Sydney could hardly have been less like a slave colony”, and thus embodied noble aspirations of Europe’s #Enlightenment. A haggard trope, that fabricates myth in service to a facile truism. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Mine & @brucealexb.bsky.social book 'Race and the Scottish Enlightement: A Colonial History' is reviewed in the recent nr of The William and Mary Quarterly. Thanks to C. D. E. Willoughby for his close engagement with our book yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300... muse.jhu.edu/issue/57168 #skystorians
yalebooks.yale.edu
Race and the Scottish Enlightenment
How colonialism shaped the Scottish Enlightenment’s conception of race and humanity   In the decades after 1750, an increasing number of former medical st...
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
@brucealexb.bsky.social and I have a new OA article in History Australia: 'Enlightenment enslavement and the Indigenous dead: trafficking slaves and skulls in the early colonisation of Australia'. Read it here: doi.org/10.1080/1449...
doi.org
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Joe Cozens @joecozens.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
1 year fixed post, £36k, at British Museum working on their eighteenth-century collections. #18thC bmrecruit.ciphr-irecruit.com/Applicants/v...
bmrecruit.ciphr-irecruit.com
Project Curator: Eighteenth-Century Britain and Europe (Documentation)
About the Documentation & Digitisation Programme
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Karen Gregory @karengregory.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
UK government visa changes are “driving universities towards a cliff edge”. www.scotsman.com/education/so...
scotsman.com
Glasgow University cuts: Social sciences to see biggest drop in overseas students
Voluntary redundancy scheme to open in August
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Warm congratulations to the wonderful Maria Floruțău on winning the @RoyalSociety's Notes and Records biennial Essay Award! Maria's prize-winning essay, "The manul or Pallas's cat" It was praised by the judges as "outstanding" and "beautifully written." More: royalsociety.org/journals/aut...
royalsociety.org
Notes and Records Essay Award | Royal Society
Open to early career researchers in the history of science.
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Millie Schurch's article 'Paper Colonialism: Instructions and Institutions at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 1770–1820', written as part of her postdoc in our ‘Early Citizen Science’ project is now published in Eighteenth-Century Studies ! muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.its.uu.se/article/993281 🧵
Print of a view of the Palm House at the Royal Botanic Gardens
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ISECS/SIEDS @isecs-sieds.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Call for papers | Women in Long Eighteenth-Century Scotland and Beyond 41st Annual Conference of the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society, 6–9 July 2027, Sorbonne Université, Paris oraprdnt.uqtr.uquebec.ca/portail/gscw...
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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
oh permanent full-time pre-1800 job at Limerick! Deadline 14 August -- start of the job in January 2027. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRU993/a... #earlymodern #MedievalSky #Skystorians #Jobfairy
jobs.ac.uk
Assistant Professor in European and or Global History (pre-1800) at University of Limerick
Apply for the Assistant Professor in European and or Global History (pre-1800) role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.
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Sadiah Qureshi 🦈 @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Permanent lectureship in Modern British History at the University of Manchester. FT, £42-58k, closing date 30 June 26, starting Sept 26 onwards. For international people, this is equivalent to a tenure-track Assistant Lectureship. www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai... #SkyStorians
jobs.manchester.ac.uk
Lecturer in Modern British History (post-1800):Oxford Road
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Reminder: WOMNH Online Seminar, Wed. 10 June ,18:00–19:00 CET 🌿 Rosa Luxemburg’s Herbarium: Radical Ecology and the Global Plantation, Speaker: Claudia Horn To attend, please email laurence.talairach@univ-tlse2.fr for the link to the virtual room. 1/
Herbaria sheet, Warsaw National Archives, Public domain
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Seminar reminder, @nulybranch.bsky.social Caomhanach : 'Collecting Rarity: The Conundrum of Instructing and Constructing - Histories of Malagasy Endemism from Colonial Plant Specimens', Wed 27 May, 15-16 CET, for Zoom link: instructingnaturalhistory@uu.se. instructingnaturalhistory.com/events
instructingnaturalhistory.com
Events — Instructing Natural History
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Onni Gust @onnigust.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Enjoying a quiet moment of interspecies intellectual exchange with Laali. Reading the excellent 'Race & the Scottish Enlightenment' by @brucealexb.bsky.social and @lindaaburnett.bsky.social.
Dog and person reading a book sat on an armchair
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Please help spread the news far and wide! We have a new, full-time, permanent Lecturer in Global History of Science job @stsucl.bsky.social Don't be fooled by the application of deadline of only 9 June 2026. This is an open search #histsci #skystorians www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
ucl.ac.uk
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Our book Race and the Scottish Enlightenment: A Colonial History, 1750–1820 is currently half price in the Yale University Press Spring Sale. yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...
yalebooks.co.uk
Race and the Scottish Enlightenment - Yale University Press London
How colonialism shaped the Scottish Enlightenment’s conception of race and humanity   In the decades after 1750, an increasing number of former me...
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Journal of Historical Geography @jofhistgeog.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
New review! Charles W.J. Withers on 'Race and the Scottish Enlightenment: A Colonial History, 1750–1820', by Linda Andersson Burnett and Bruce Buchan.
sciencedirect.com
Review: Race and the Scottish Enlightenment: A Colonial History, 1750–1820, by Linda Andersson Burnett and Bruce Buchan — Yale University Press, New Haven and London (2025), The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History, 294 pages, hardback.
Journal of Historical Geography
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 14/05/2026
We desperately need to get away from arguments for the humanities that elevate them because of what they do for technology. The humanities should not be understood as service disciplines. They are an extension of us, and that is enough.
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Honoured to see our book Race and the Scottish Enlightenment: A Colonial History (@brucealexb.bsky.social), shortlisted for the Pickstone Prize by the British Society for the History of Science bshs.org.uk/pickstone-pr... It’s a real privilege to be included alongside such inspiring scholarship.
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
WOMNH seminar! 6 May, 15:00–16:00 (CET) 'Everywhere and Nowhere: Women in the Making of Natural History' Luisa Kapp. Please contact Laurence Talairach for link: laurence.talairach@univ-tlse2.fr womnh.hypotheses.org/events Please circulate. Abstract below.
Two women in the entomological section, © Senckenberg Archive
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Seminar alert! Nuala Caomhanach (@nulybranch.bsky.social) : 'Collecting Rarity: The Conundrum of Instructing and Constructing - Histories of Malagasy Endemism from Colonial Plant Specimens', Wed 29 April, 15-16 CET, for Zoom link: please email instructingnaturalhistory@uu.se. 🧵
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
We’re excited to share our seminar line-up for Women in Natural History Museums & Collections. Please join us and help circulate! First out: Wednesday 6 May – 15:00–16:00 (CET) Luisa Kapp (Senckenberg Nature Research) “Everywhere and Nowhere: Women in the Making of Natural History” 🧵#histsci #HPS
Two women in the entomological section, © Senckenberg Archive
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Kris Inwood @kris-inwood.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Lecturer in Medieval & Early Modern History The School of History at the ANU seeks to appoint a Lecturer in History. Applicants working at the forefront of gender history between the 12th & 18th centuries, and on regions beyond Europe & Australia, are encouraged to apply. Applications due 19 April.
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Feminist Science @feministscience.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
More than you think, but still not enough women in STEM -history of women in STEM in the 19th and early 20th centuries #feminism #feministscience #womeninSTEM feministscientist.substack.com/p/more-than-...
feministscientist.substack.com
More than you think, but still not enough
The secret history of women in STEM Before WWII
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Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh @gianamar97.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Join Environment & Society's @uvahumanities.bsky.social book preview tomorrow at midday in the Bushuis, room E1.01E. Patrick Anthony (Uppsala) will present his forthcoming book, Unearthed: Science and Environment across Mineral Frontiers, with commentary by @mathijsboom.bsky.social Boom (IISG)
uva.nl
Unearthed: Science and Environment across Mineral Frontiers
Patrick Anthony presents his new book Unearthed: Science and Environment across Mineral Frontiers, which tells the story of earth and atmospheric sciences assembled across world mineral frontiers in t...
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
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
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.
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Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
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...
theguardian.com
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
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Sabine Clarke @sabineclarke.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
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
features.york.ac.uk
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...
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
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
instructingnaturalhistory.com
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Elizabeth N. Saunders @profsaunders.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
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?
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
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
instructingnaturalhistory.com
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...
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
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
Poster showing the seminar schedule. The image is of Louis XVI giving instructions
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