Research:

The NWO-project ‘A New History of Fishes. A long-term approach to fishes in science and culture, 1550-1880‘ proposes a new history of European ichthyological knowledge over three centuries (1550-1880). We look at ‘science’ in context – and, therefore, for the early modern period at expert fish knowledge (manifested in collecting practices and information exchange via texts, objects and images) before it became a scientific discipline. We combine this contextual approach with analysis of the important fish books of the 16th-19th centuries, focusing on four aspects that continue to play a key part in ichthyology throughout the period: autopsy (dissection), classification, illustration/description, and rhetorics of description. Following this approach we hope to answer our central questions: How and where did ichthyology develop as a scientific discipline; how did it take shape as a field of expert knowledge in the cultural context of early-modern and modern Europe. 

My PhD sub-project ‘Tradition and Innovation: Conrad Gessner and Sixteenth-Century Ichthyology (1551-1602)’ takes Conrad Gessner’s Historia Piscium (1558) as a point of focus within a broad corpus of primary sources, including well-known authors such as Pierre Belon, Hippolito Salviani, and Guillaume Rondelet, as well as lesser-known authors such as Gregor Mangolt and Johann Kentmann. Up until the sixteenth century ichthyology as a field of study was still relatively unexplored, resulting in a surge in interest in and publications on the subject, which began roughly around 1550. This project considers the effect of a lack of existing knowledge and literature and the rapid expansion of knowledge on the organisation and presentation of information within ichthyology, focussing on organisations of species as well as books and texts, and on the description and depiction of species, as well as on exchange and collective interpretations of knowledge within scholarly networks and intertextually (across various types of texts including literature, mythology, religious texts, in medical context, and in culinary works).

Teaching: 

2022: ‘Monsters en meerminnen – zeemonsters in de natuurhistorie‘. Summerschool History of the Book, Allard Pierson / UvA.

2019: ‘Things to do with Texts. Natural History from the Renaissance to Darwin’. Leiden University Humanities Lab.

2017: ‘Things to do with Texts. The Exploration of Nature through word and image’. Leiden University Humanities Lab.

2016: ‘Things to Do With Texts: Capturing Nature in Word and Image ’. Leiden University Humanities Lab.

2016: ‘Natural History in Word and Image (800-1600)’. Arts and Culture research master, Leiden University.

2012, 2013, 2014 ‘History of Biological Illustrations Workshop’ Amsterdam University College.

Conrad Gessner’s Historia piscium (1558), more information: Rare Fish Books