Research Topic
Arranging unknown worlds: plant collection, information management, and British empire in the early-eighteenth century
My doctoral thesis uses the Du Bois Herbarium, a historic botanical collection of over 14,000 eighteenth-century plant specimens held in Oxford, as an intellectual starting point, and builds outward to situate this scientific resource within its political, economic, and imperial contexts. This intellectual archive, constructed throughout its creator’s tenure as treasurer of the English East India Company, stands as a unique relic of early modern British botany and collecting culture, and in particular the significance of South Asian plants in this environment. I argue that Charles du Bois actively managed early imperial trade in addition to his scientific interests, and that his surviving herbarium serves as a crucial tool illustrating the organised networks of British natural history and empire in the East at a time when they are typically perceived as nascent systems. My work is generously funded by the Royal Society and Beit Fund.
For further information on my research, questions, or interest in collaboration, you can reach me at the email address listed above. If you are a potential student interested in graduate study in history at the University of Oxford, please feel free to get in touch.
Supervisors: Professor Erica Charters & Professor Stephen Harris
Research Interests:
Histories of science and medicine; British colonialism; botany and classification; herbaria collections and botanical gardens; natural history; the English East India Company; collections and museums; the University of Oxford; early modern Europe
Education:
BA - History and Physics | University of Southern California, 2019
MPhil - History of Science Medicine and Technology (Distinction) | University of Oxford, 2021
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