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IBSS Seminar Series: "Slaving Science: Natural Historical Collecting and the British Slave Trade"



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Dr. Kate Murphy, "Slaving Science: Natural Historical Collecting and the British Slave Trade"
California Polytechnic State University

We rarely think about the wretched, inhuman spaces of slave ships as having anything to do with natural history. Yet this talk reveals how thousands of scientific specimens were gathered by means of the eighteenth-century British transatlantic slave trade, including some specimens that survive in modern scientific collections.

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Dr. Kathleen Murphy is Professor of History and Associate Dean for Student Success at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California. Kate received her M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the Johns Hopkins University and her B.A. from the University of Virginia. Her research and teaching focus on the intersection of the history of science, slavery, and collecting in the early modern Atlantic World. She is currently completing a book entitled Collecting Slave Traders: Natural History and the Eighteenth-Century British Slave Trade, to be published with University of North Carolina Press. Collecting Slave Traders traces the entwined histories of natural historical collecting and the British slave trade in the eighteenth century. It shows how British naturalists exploited the slave trade to collect plants, animals, fossils, shells, and other natural historical specimens, as well as how slaving companies turned to natural history in the hopes of becoming more profitable. Dr. Murphy has won numerous grants and fellowships in support of her research, including from the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, and the American Philosophical Society.

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This seminar series is part of the Academy’s DEIA efforts, and a follow up to an internal workshop highlighting the Academy’s own racist and colonial legacies. This summer we are hoping to learn more about the history of scientific racism, colonial legacies in museums and collections, community partnerships in research, and any other topics that address racism and colonialism in science. Read more: https://www.calacademy.org/diversity-equity-inclusion-access

Photo: Account of the natural history of Jamaica and its neighbouring islands by Sir Hans Sloane. Published London 1707. Credit: Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London

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