Notes on the Contributors
Cristina Brito
is Associate Professor at the History Department at NOVA FCSH, Lisbon, and a senior researcher at CHAM – Center for the Humanities. She is a co-PI of the ERC Synergy Grant 4-OCEANS: Human History of Marine Life (GA: 951649). Cristina Brito has an interdisciplinary, comparative, and cross-cultural approach to her research. Her scientific interests include early modern marine environmental history, local and global perceptions about and uses of the seas, Atlantic and oceanic histories, humans and nonhumans entanglements, the Anthropocene, and the Blue Humanities. She coordinates several research projects, is a member of the Board of OPI – Oceans Past Initiative, and is active in several networks and research projects, such as the UNESCO Chair on Oceans’ Cultural Heritage and the H2020 RISE project CONCHA.
Tobias Bulang
studied German and philosophy at the TU Dresden and The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio (USA). In 2002 he obtained his PhD in Dresden with a work about literature and historicism. Between 2003 and 2012 he had different engagements at the Universities of Göttingen, Dresden, Zurich, and Munich. In 2009 he obtained his Habilitation in Zurich with a study on mediaeval and early modern encyclopaedic poetry. Since 2012 he has been a Professor for Medieval German Literature at the University of Heidelberg.
João Paulo S. Cabral
earned his degree in History at Open University and a PhD in Biology at Oporto University. Between 1991 and 2022, he was university professor at Oporto University, teaching biology and history of biology. His research interests have focused on archaeomalacology and history of botany, resulting in the publication of articles on molluscs found in Portuguese archaeological sites, and several books and articles on the life and work of Garcia de Orta (ca. 1501–1568), Father Jerónimo Lobo SJ (1593–1678), Gabriel Grisley (–after 1669), Domingos Vandelli (1735–1816), Gonçalo Sampaio (1865–1937), Rocha Peixoto (1866–1909) and Américo Pires de Lima (1886–1963), and a book, Natural History in the Enlightenment, published in 2022.
Dorothee Fischer
is a university lecturer and research assistant at the Department of Art History at the Universität Trier, Germany. She has studied at the Universität Konstanz (Germany), the University College Cork (Ireland) and the Universität Wien (Austria). Her research focuses on human-animal relations in art (history). With a particular interest in aquatic animals, she has published on animals’ agency in contemporary art as well as on collecting animals in the early modern period. She is currently working on her doctoral thesis regarding the representation of fish in 18th-century natural collections.
Holger Funk
is an independent scholar. He has published numerous articles and a few books on zoology and botany from antiquity to the 18th century. Currently he is preparing a nomenclaturally updated electronical version of D.W. Thompson’s Glossary of Greek Fishes (1947). In addition, he writes contributions to Christopher Scharpf’s ETYFish Project (https://etyfish.org/).
Dirk Geirnaert
is an independent researcher in the domain of Dutch historical literature and linguistics. He was one of the editors of the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, the counterpart of the Oxford English Dictionary, describing the Dutch vocabulary from 1500 up to and including 1975. He is co-author of Het Antwerps liedboek, edition by D.E. van der Poel a.o., with a reconstruction of the tunes by L.P. Grijp (2004) and, with prof. R. Lievens, of Van zondeval tot hemel, staties uit de heilsgeschiedenis, a study and edition of an unknown fifteenth century work by the Brugean rhetorician Anthonis de Roovere on the life and passion of Christ (2018). Furthermore he has published many articles on Middle Dutch fragments, on Dutch literature of the Middle Ages and the sixteenth century (especially in Bruges) and on allied products of medieval and renaissance figurative arts.
Philippe Glardon
has a doctorate in history from the University of Lausanne. His fields of research include the history of pre-scientific and scientific discourses and vocabularies, the history of modern botany and zoology (Renaissance–19th century) and the history of scientific illustration. His thesis is on the natural history of the 16th century. He teaches history of science at the École Polytechnique de Lausanne (EPFL) and is a lecturer at the University of Lausanne (Faculty of Biology and Medicine) since 2009.
Justin R. Hanisch
is a biologist for the Government of Alberta and also a collector and independent scholar of antiquarian books on fishes. He obtained a PhD. in ecology in 2016 from the University of Alberta under the supervision of Drs. William M. Tonn. His professional research interest includes monitoring impacts of anthropogenic activities on freshwater ecosystems. As a bibliophile and independent scholar, Hanisch’s primary interest is pre-20th century books, manuscripts, and ephemera on the natural and social history of fishes. He has previously authored an exhibition catalogue, A Contemplative Angler, Selections from the Bruce P. Dancik Collection of Angling Books (2018).
Bernardo Jerosch Herold
graduated in Chemical Engineering 1956 at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Lisbon University, and achieved his PhD in Chemistry at Heidelberg University in 1961. He was Professor of Industrial Organic Chemistry IST 1962–2003. He belongs to the Centro de Química Estrutural, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon University and is a Member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. He is interested in the history of science and natural history of Portugal and in early modern travel accounts.
Rob Lenders
is an assistant professor at the Institute for Science in Society (ISiS) and at the Radboud Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences (RIBES) (Nijmegen, the Netherlands). He is an animal ecologist by training, specialised mainly in fish, amphibians and reptiles. His teaching and research focusses on changing human – nature relationships, especially but not exclusively, from a historical perspective, spanning the entire Holocene. To this end, he works intensively with historians, archaeologists, linguists, sociologists and philosophers. He is one of the initiators of the ATHENA project (Access Tool for Historical ecology and ENvironmental Archaeology).
Alan Moss
received his PhD degree at Radboud University Nijmegen in 2022. His thesis focuses on seventeenth-century travelogues, more specific on the cultural and religious encounters and confrontations of Dutch travellers on the Grand Tour. He works as a researcher for the Dutch National Archives (Nationaal Archief), where he focusses on the War Archives of the Dutch Red Cross. His main research interests lie in the field of early modern history of travel, nationalism and national thought, cultural exchange, peace studies, pamphlet culture, and humour and satire.
Doreen Mueller
is assistant professor of Japanese art and material culture at Leiden University. She earned a PhD in the History of Art at SOAS, University of London. Her research explores the intersections of visual culture, social and environmental history with a focus on how representations of famine and natural disasters were used for moral admonition and social criticism in early modern Japan. She has published on the production of knowledge about animals and plants in early modern East Asia, and the nature of political caricature in nineteenth-century Japan.
Johannes Müller
is assistant professor of German and Literary Studies. His research interests include environmental history, migration and the circulation of knowledge and science in the early modern world.
Martien J.P. van Oijen
was trained as a biologist at Leiden University. He was curator of Fishes at the Rijks Museum van Natuurlijke History RMNH, Head of the Department of Vertebrates at the Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum and senior researcher at Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden. Before he was employed at the RMNH he spent three years in Tanzania investigating haplochromine cichlids of Lake Victoria. On the bass this research he earned his Ph.D. As curator of Fishes, he specialized in the work of the Dutch ichthyologist Pieter Bleeker, the Japanese fishes from the Siebold collection, and the history of the RMNH collection. He was involved in a number of exhibitions on the Siebold collection and published a Dutch translation of von Siebold’s account of the court journey of 1826.
Pietro Daniel Omodeo
is a cultural historian of science and professor of historical epistemology at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Since 2023, he is the holder of the UNESCO Chair for Water, Heritage, and Sustainable Development. He is the PI of the ERC project EarlyModernCosmology (2017–2023, GA 725883), the FARE project EarlyGeoPraxis (funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research) and the Max Planck Partner Group in Venice The Water City. Among other publications, he is the author of Defending Descartes in Brandenburg-Prussia (2022); Political Epistemology (2019), and (with Jürgen Renn) Science in Court Society (2019).
Anne Overduin-de Vries
is a biologist who earned her PhD at Utrecht University. Her thesis focusses on the cognitive capacities in the visual domain of non-human primates. She is currently working as the project coordinator on the “Malesian butterfly project” at Naturalis Biodiversity Center. Previously she coordinated the citizen science project “Fishing in the past” hosted by Naturalis.
Theodore W. Pietsch
is professor emeritus and curator emeritus of fishes in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, and Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was educated at the University of Michigan (B.A., 1967), University of Southern California (M.S. and Ph.D., 1969 and 1972), and Harvard University (Postdoctoral Fellowship, 1973–1975). He has conducted research in marine ichthyology, especially the biosystematics, zoogeography, and reproductive biology of coral reef and deep-sea fishes. He has published extensively on the biology of fishes as well as the history of science.
Cynthia M. Pyle
was trained as a biologist, and worked at MIT and Harvard prior to becoming a scholar of the 15th and 16th Century European Renaissance (Ph.D. Columbia University). She was an Attachée de Recherche in the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris; a Research Associate in the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, and she founded the Renaissance Studies Certificate Program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is currently a Research Affiliate at New York University, and the Co-Chair of the Columbia University Seminar in the Renaissance.
Marlise Rijks
is a historian specialized in art, science, and technology of the early modern period. She is assistant professor at the VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussels) and postdoc researcher at Ghent University, working on the project Printing Images in the Early Modern Low Countries. Patents, Copyrights, and the Separation of Art and Technology (funded by the Research Foundation Flanders, FWO). In the years 2016–2020 she worked at Leiden University on the NWO-funded project A New History of Fishes. A Long-term Approach to Fishes in Science and Culture, 1550–1800. She has published widely on the history of collections, natural history, and workshop knowledge. Her recently published monograph is titled Artists’ and Artisans’ Collections in Early Modern Antwerp. Catalysts of Innovation (2022).
Ronny Spaans
is Associate Professor in Nordic Literature at the University of Oslo. In 2015 he earned his PhD at the same university with his thesis on the poetry of the Dutch writer Joannes Six van Chandelier (1620–1695). The thesis appeared in 2020 as monography at Amsterdam University Press: Dangerous Drugs. The Self-Presentation of the Merchant-Poet Joannes Six van Chandelier (1620–1695).
Robbert Striekwold
is a PhD student at Naturalis Biodiversity Center and Leiden University, where he studies the history of Dutch 19th-century ichthyology. He studied biology and history of science in Utrecht and Stockholm. His research interests include the history of modern biology and palaeontology in relation to collections.
Melinda Susanto
is a PhD candidate in history at Leiden University. Her current research investigates how botanical and medical knowledge played a role in interactions between Asian courts and the Dutch East India Company in the early modern period. Her research interests include the intersections between natural history and visual and material culture, and the role of South and Southeast Asia in global circulations of knowledge.
Didi van Trijp
is historian of science and curator. She earned her PhD at Leiden University in 2021 as part of the NWO-funded project A New History of Fishes. Her doctoral dissertation examined the cultural history of eighteenth-century natural historical studies into fish, and is under contract to appear with Brill (in the series Emergence of Natural History). Her research is concerned with the history of collecting and the material and visual culture of science, particularly of natural history in the early modern period. A recent fellowship at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia focused on techniques to convey iridescence in natural historical plates and drawings.
Sabina Tsapaeva
is a scientific researcher and freelance lecturer at the Institute of German studies of the University of Hamburg, where she teaches history of the German and Low German languages, Medieval studies and Contact Linguistics. She previously was a research assistant and freelance lecturer of Low German Philology at the University of Rostock. Her research interests are, among others, historical linguistics, historical semantics, historical lexicology and lexicography, Middle Low German language and intralingual translation of historical texts. Her publications include Das Rostocker Tierepos ‘Reynke Vosz de olde’ (Ludwig Dietz, 1539) im Kontext der niederdeutschen ‘Reynke de vos’ – Überlieferung des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts […] (2018). She is the author (2017, 2021) and the editor (2019, 2020, 2023) of Mittelniederdeutsches Wörterbuch.
Ching-Ling Wang
is curator of Chinese art at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. He received his doctoral degree from Freie Universität, Berlin. He worked as research fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut of the Max-Planck Institut in Florence, and was curator of Chinese art at the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. His research focuses on Chinese painting, Qing court art, and the exchanges between China and Europe in the field of visual culture.