Hot off the press — our reading list for the coming term. Join us every other Wednesday, 12-1pm, at Gonville and Caius to discuss cities in the long eighteenth century 🌇

Our mini-symposium will follow our termly discussion group – this term, on Cities. We meet fortnightly and lunchtimes at a central Cambridge location. To stay abreast of any news, you can subscribe to our mailing list here: lists.cam.ac.uk/sympa/subscr...

We're excited to announce our CFP for our Lent term mini-symposium on the theme of Cities! We're thrilled to have Professor Miles Ogborn as our keynote speaker. If you are a Cambridge-based postgraduate, recent postgraduate, or ECR do think of applying by 12 February!

A reminder that our Salon symposium is tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday 26 November! Our theme is ‘The Senses’ and we’re taking an embodied, medical history, musical, and craft-based approach to the long eighteenth century.

The Salon got off to a fantastic start last week when we discussed smell! This week, it’s Taste, and we’ll be meeting 12-1pm tomorrow in the Junior Parlour at Caius. We’ll discuss Robles’ chapter on ‘Squid’ in Natural Things in Early Modern Worlds + the online exhibition kitcheninthecabinet.com

Our first session of the term takes place tomorrow (Wednesday 15th) at 12 noon! Please note the updated location in the Junior Parlour, Gonville & Caius

Many thanks to @zarakesterton.bsky.social for a very generous review of Shoes and the Georgian Man in the new issue of Selvedge. Much appreciated! www.selvedge.org/products/iss...

Calling all Cambridge postgrads! Come to our discussion group and symposium

Excited to see this published @frenchhistory.bsky.social! ‘Only illusions are amusing …’: nature, artifice and femininity in eighteenth-century France through the lens of Louis de Carmontelle' by @zarakesterton.bsky.social 🌼🌺🌸🎨 academic.oup.com/fh/article/d...

🌹I was so lucky to take part in an incredible conference: “Plants & People: the Cultivation and Propagation of Botanical Knowledge Among Non-Professional Communities, c. 1600-1800" (8-9 July 2025) at Cambridge; organised by @zarakesterton.bsky.social and @lucyjhavard.bsky.social 🌱 🌿 🌺

That’s a wrap on #plantsandpeople! Thanks to all of our wonderful speakers, keynotes, artists, and attendees for two days of fantastic discussion and hands-on experimentation. Over and out from @zarakesterton.bsky.social and @lucyjhavard.bsky.social !

Now for the final paper of the day! We hear from Christina Welch from the University of Winchester on ‘People and Plants in the Colonial Caribbean: Indigenous and Enslaved African People’s Medicinal and Horticultural Knowledge’ 🌱 🌅 🌺 #peopleandplants

Next up is a paper by Margaux Shraiman entitled 'A Surinamese Butterfly Among Cape Flowers: Maria Sibylla Merian’s Copies of botanical illustrations from the Cabinet of Johanna Breda and Levinus Vincent' 🌼🦋 #plantsandpeople

…and a glimpse into our earlier study session at the Fitzwilliam Museum, a tour of the botanical highlights of the prints and drawings collection led by Catherine Powell Warren 🌷🖌️ #plantsandpeople

Our final panel of the conference on ‘Empire and Knowledge’ begins with Joseph Bienko’s paper on 'Baconian Buccaneering: William Dampier’s Excursion to Panama' ⛵️🌿 #plantsandpeople

And now for the final paper of this panel on Medical Knowledge… Lauren Owen’s from Florida State University speaks to us about recipes for health and wellness in 18thC France! #plantsandpeople

Our third panel of the conference on Medical Knowledge kicks off with a paper from Nikolas Brusletto on ‘Botanical Knowledge in the Norwegian Black Books: Folk Medicine, Embodied Experience, and Social Networks’! #plantsandpeople

We have two workshops running in tandem this morning at the #plantsandpeople conference - one on botanical images at the Fitzwilliam Museum, and a practical workshop on early modern dye production with Nabil Ali! Thanks to @jesuscollegecam.bsky.social for the use of your greenhouses!

Our second and final keynote of the day, @leoniehannan.bsky.social now speaking on ‘Plants as Process: Embodied Knowledge and the ‘Liberty of Air’’! #plantsandpeople

And moving to the final paper of this panel, ‘Gardening as Knowledge Practice: Historical Handbooks for Kitchen Gardens’ by Sanne Steen 🪏🪴📚 #plantsandpeople

And now it’s time for Janet Stiles Tyson’s paper, ‘A Curious Herbal in the Commercial Book Market’, examining Elizabeth Blackwell’s famous illustrated work #plantsandpeople

And we’re back, fuelled after a lovely lunch break! 🥗 🌯🥪 We begin our panel on ‘Books and Knowledge’ with a paper from Grace Murray from Birkbeck entitled ‘Marginalia and Memory Books: Writing Garden Labour in Eighteenth-Century London’ #plantsandpeople

The final paper of this panel is from Maja-Lisa Müller from Universität Bielefeld, entitled ‘Mushrooms and Mimesis: 18thC Wax Models as Deictic and Didactic Boundary Objects’! 🍄🍄‍🟫🍄

Now we hear from Alasdair McNeill from Birkbeck on ‘Cheesemakers and Plant Knowledge in Early Modern England’! 🧀🌻 #plantsandpeople

Now onto our first panel on ‘Embodied Knowledge’! We begin with a paper by Océane Fontaine Cioffi on ‘Naming Selecting, and Using Plants: Botanical Knowledge in 16thC Perfumery’… 🌸🌺🪻#plantsandpeople

The best thing about running a conference is inviting your dream keynote speakers! Follow along for updates throughout today and tomorrow 🌸

Our next event of term is taking place TODAY! (Monday 2nd June) at 5.30 pm (not 5 pm!) in the Junior Parlour at Gonville & Caius College. We'll be hearing papers from João Moreira da Silva @joaomoreiradasilva.bsky.social and Andrés Jácome. All are welcome to join!

Only two spaces left for our Natural Dyes workshop, and our Botanical Illustrations study session is already sold out! Grab your spot here: sites.google.com/view/plants-...

Join us today for the first session of the term!

Registration is now OPEN for our conference 'Plants and People'! Please sign up for attendance and workshops through our website: sites.google.com/view/plants-... Thanks to @sshmedicine.bsky.social @camhistory.bsky.social & the Material Culture Forum for their generous assistance.

Thrilled with our line-up for this conference! Hoping to see lots of friends, old and new.

Our Easter term CfP is now open! Send us your abstracts by 28 April 🌿

...and that's our Call for Papers officially closed! We received a fantastic number of abstracts. We're looking forward to selecting papers for our conference in the next few days, and will be in touch with all applicants as soon as we can.

Our final session of Lent term is on Tuesday! We will be hosting an *online only* event featuring two exciting papers from @arrannerispoli.bsky.social and Deiara Semeco Kouto. DM us for the Teams link or subscribe to our mailing list via the link in our bio.

Three days left to respond to our Call for Papers! Send your abstracts and bios to [email protected] and [email protected] by Friday 14 March

Our next session of the term is tomorrow evening at 5pm in Teaching Room 1, Old Divinity School! We’re delighted to welcome Nate Catching and Tiéphaine Thomason to speak on war and peace in France and Martinique 🕊️ Join us in person or online (message for a Teams link)

I’m presenting on some of my favourite paintings at the @18thcenturycam.bsky.social workshop today!

We are delighted to announce our Lent term card! Our first session is a big Bach event on 4 February at St John’s College Library seminar room. 🎶 For more details, subscribe to our mailing list: lists.cam.ac.uk/sympa/subscr...

Thrilled to be organising this conference with @lucyjhavard.bsky.social! We have some wonderful keynotes and creative workshops lined up 🥰

⏳ Deadline extended! ⏳ You now have until this Friday 17 January to apply to speak at our workshop. All postgraduate students and ECRs welcome. Come and join our friendly 18th century community 😊

One day left to submit your abstracts! 🕰️

French historians… if a 1755 marriage contract in Paris is witnessed by a “marchand limonadier”, is that likely to be a lemonade seller or a cafe owner? Keeping my fingers crossed for the former 😬🤞

The deadline for our Lent Term CfP is next week! To apply, please send a 250 word abstract and short bio to our email [email protected] by 10 January. Our theme this term is ✨ Form and Function ✨

Our Long 18th Century workshop is now accepting paper proposals for Lent Term 2025! We welcome 250 word abstracts on the theme Form and Function by 10 January. Looking forward to another great term ✨

What an incredible honour and privilege to meet “la momie de Strasbourg” yesterday to study her crown of artificial flowers. It’s incredibly rare to see surviving flower accessories from the 17th century, and even rarer to see them in the presence of the young woman who wore them. Unforgettable!

It’s the final session of the term for the Cambridge Long 18th Century Workshop tomorrow — and it’s a bumper edition! We’ll be meeting in the Arthur Quiller-Couch room at 5pm tomorrow and on Teams. Sign up to our mailing list for more details. See you there! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿💡🕰️ lists.cam.ac.uk/sympa/subscr...

📣Out now on #firstview! Zara Kesterton (@zarakesterton.bsky.social) on 'Artificial Flowers in the Credit Records of an Eighteenth-Century French Fashion Merchant' #Clothing #Botany #Knowledge #Science #Women #History 18thc 🗃️🌷💐🌹 👉Read OA here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

My first article has just been published open access! It has floral puns, pretty pictures, and a ridiculous pie chart 💐 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I stumbled across this magnificent portrait, presumed to be of Louise Vicomtesse de Polastron, which would be perfect for an article I'm working on. Alas, it's in an unknown private collection and I doubt I'd ever get permission to use it!

Kicking off my posts on this colourful place with an exciting day from last week — a natural dye workshop with the artist Nabil Ali at Cambridge Botanic Gardens! It was such a treat to play around with brazilwood, madder, and buckthorn berries making all sorts of lovely pinks and yellows