Matthew Holmes

I think it's probably time to announce that me and @colinhoag.bsky.social are the incoming Editors of Environmental Humanities journal, published by @dukepress.bsky.social . Huge thanks to Franklin Ginn & @dollyjorgensen.bsky.social for all their work as Eds, & for patiently showing us the ropes!

Ghosts Behind Glass How museums display extinct species—and what these exhibits say about us.   While it’s no longer possible to encounter a dodo in the wild, we can still come face-to-face with them in museums. The rema...

Are you in UK and want to hear about my book Ghosts Behind Glass? 3 public talks in Feb:
Cambridge Museum of Zoology, 11 Feb www.museum.zoo.cam.ac.uk/events/talk-...
M Shed Bristol, 12 Feb  www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/m-s...
Oxford NatHist Museum, 13 Feb www.oumnh.ox.ac.uk/event/dead-a...

Grafting trick could let us gene-edit a huge variety of plants Many plants including cocoa, coffee and avocado cannot be gene-edited but a technique involving grafting could change that, opening the door to more productive and nutritious varieties

The ancient trick of grafting one plant onto another could find a very modern use – enabling gene editing of plants that are very difficult or impossible to edit by other means.

Poster for Masters in Public Environmental Humanities. Our 2-year masters program in beautiful Stavanger, Norway, invites you to study today's environmental challenges as deeply rooted in culture and history. Key aspects: • Combine critical thinking with hands-on engagement • Work across humanities fields • Put learning into action through an internship • Taught entirely in English • Free tuition for students from EU/EEA/Switzerland and affordable for others If you believe community-engaged humanities can help build a more sustainable future, this is the place to start. GET MORE INFO & APPLY FOR FALL 2026 Questions? Email PEH@uis.no

The Greenhouse @unistavanger.bsky.social is launching an international Masters Program in Public Environmental Humanities from fall 2026! Taught in English.

Please share with all your students, #envhist #envhum colleagues!

Learn more about the program here: www.uis.no/en/studies/t...

Review: "Ghosts Behind Glass: Encountering Extinction in Museums" by Dolly Jørgensen A book rich in observations drawn from visits to over eighty museums worldwide, “Ghosts Behind Glass” glimpses at how they present extinction to the public.

"Ghosts Behind Glass offers valuable insights into humanity’s grappling with our own hand in irrevocable loss, but the delight of the book is much simpler: as Jørgensen globetrots, we experience the museums and extinct species she visits through her enchanted gaze."
lit.newcity.com/2025/10/30/s...

So great to see my new book How Plague Got Rats:
Mastering a Zoonotic Pandemic, published OA @hopkinspress.bsky.social next May, has got a cover! www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...

I looked through my “extinction in museums” files and discovered that I have encountered a slender-billed curlew at the Museum of Natural History, University of Wrocław, Poland.
Now gets added to the list of extinct animals.

@collecol.bsky.social is back! 🪲

We've put together a great seminar series - we hope you'll come along!

On 2 Oct 11am EDT/4pm GMT we're doing a reading club - Appadurai's "The Museum, the Colony, and the Planet: Territories of the Imperial Imagination".

All info ⬇️ www.chstm.org/group/collec...

New on H-Sci-Med-Tech:

Check out Eric J. Richards (@btiscience.bsky.social)‬’s review of @mattholmes.bsky.social’s book _The Graft Hybrid: Challenging Twentieth-Century Genetics_ pub 2024 @upittpress.bsky.social
‬
#HSTM

Review available @hnetreviews.bsky.social
www.h-net.org/reviews/show...

Matt Holmes's presentation at the Planetary Futures conference at Manchester Museum

Angela Cassidy's presentation at the Planetary Futures conference at Manchester Museum on pests and coypu (aka nutria)

Had a really good time at the Planetary Futures conference in Manchester. Big thanks to wonderful organizers @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social, @duncanwilson78.bsky.social and presenters!

Snapshots from talks🧵
@mattholmes.bsky.social
@angecass.bsky.social
#envhist
#envhum
#histsci

On left: purple flower and underneath Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book Talks On right: cover of the book Contesting Earth's History in Transatlantic Literary Culture, 1860-1935 with drawings of many animals and two naked people

Join us Mon 1 Sept 2025 for @greenhouseuis.net #envhum book talk with @richardfallon.bsky.social on Contesting Earth’s History in Transatlantic Literary Culture 1860-1935: Believers & Visionaries on the Borderlines of Geology & Palaeontology (Oxford UP 2025).
newnatures.org/greenhouse/e...
#histsci

URL and ALT text to follow.

excited to share the call for the workshop

EXTRACTIVE NATURES / NATURES OF EXTRACTION

happening at @uobrisceh.bsky.social on 6-7 Nov 2025,

made possible by the @britishacademy.bsky.social

deadline: 10 September!

full call below ⤵

#envhist #envhum

I have a horrible feeling I forgot to post that registration for this conference about extinction, conservation and the future of our planet is now open. We have an amazing range of speakers, who are listed here, alongside the link to register.

networks.h-net.org/group/announ...

Manchester University Press - Electric wind Electric wind - Browse and buy the Paperback edition of Electric wind by Marianna Dudley

If you would like to review my book for a publication, get in touch! The book is a history of wind energy and I’m trying to get it out to as wide an audience as possible.

manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526182968/

Make sure to read @monicavasile.bsky.social's wonderful new article in Environmental Humanities - arguing we should think of reintroduction projects not as a form of 'homecoming', but as 'homemaking'. #MovingAnimals read.dukeupress.edu/environmenta...

The Humanities and Technology Association (HTA) have published a Call for Papers for their 43rd annual Humanities and Technology Association Conference, held at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island from Oct. 23-25th, 2025.

What a great roundtable! @collecol.bsky.social!

A red flower on a green stem withe the words: BHL Call for support now open overlayed.

📢 The #BiodiversityHeritageLibrary is entering a bold new chapter – and we need your help! Today we release our official Call for Support. We’re seeking new hosts for BHL’s staff, infrastructure, and services. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/06/tran... #BHLTransition #ILoveBHL

Please consider supporting the Biodiversity Heritage Library! #envhist #envhum

I’m very happy to announce that I’ve been awarded an IRFD Starting Grant for the project “Sovereign Flowers: Flora Danica and the Emergence of the National Flora, 1750–1900.” Hooray! The project allows me to build a small research group of a PhD student and a postdoc at Aarhus University (@au.dk).

Absolute Units: three giant rams float over the English countryside.

Absolute Units returns!!!

In this ep, we speak to environmental historian @dollyjorgensen.bsky.social about her research into pigs in medieval England.

Topics include: taking your hogs for a walk, the Hapsburg chin of domestic pigs, Babe 2, and so much more.

merl.reading.ac.uk/explore/abso...

Hey #histtech, can we dig up some suggestions here?

📣 Join historian Sadiah Qureshi as she shares insights from Vanished, her acclaimed new book on extinction, empire & erasure for free! With an introduction by Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk!
🗓 Wed 9 July, 6–10pm
📍 Cambridge
🎟 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1395979053...
#PublicLecture #histSTM

Content, Overview, and Scope of Food Section for Environmental Change and Human Experience. Section name: Food Section Editor(s): Gabriella M. Petrick, Ph.D. Content overview and scope : The Food section of Environmental Change and Human Experience will focus on the tension between the need for humans to sustain themselves while simultaneously exploiting the natural resources and environments surrounding them. Humans and their agricultural practices have long redesigned the environment in both helpful and problematic ways for animals, insects, and societies. Articles in the series will explore the diversity of foods and beverages across space and time and illustrate how food production has reshaped communities, cultures, and the landscape. These essays and topics use new research to build on older literature and will provide new insights on historical themes such as globalization, power, and industrialization. They also highlight new areas of research such as the consequences of technologies on the environment, animal studies and how of more-than-human actors shaped the past, water studies, and indigenous approaches to historical and contemporary foods and food systems. The essays will fall under the topics of “Food Flows: The Circulation of Food across the World”; “Indigenous Knowledge: Sustaining and Exploiting Food Environments”; “Animals: More than Just Meat”; “Quenching a Thirst: Water and Other Drinks”; “Food and Power”; “Building Fields of Dreams: Agriculture and the Reshaping of Landscapes”, and “Industrial Food”.

I'm editing the Food (& Drink) Section for Environmental Change and Human Experience for OUP Intersections. Looking for new work on food, drink and the environment. Contact me if you want to learn more. It is peer-reviewed.
academic.oup.com/oxford-inter...

Interesting role for a Historian or Arts/Humanities scholar to join at a senior level in the research team; overlapping specialities required: Early Modern, history of enslavement, country house history, plant humanities.

Join us & let‘s workshop together!
#envhum #collections #museum

Today in two weeks (17.06), we'll hold the workshop "Historical Contingency" with Gregory Radick and Robert Northcott as speakers. The event will be hybrid, taking place in person in Ostrava and on Zoom. For more information, see below or here: philevents.org/event/show/1....

All welcome!

Your friendly neighborhood manatee 🤗〰️🐮〰️ #manatee #manateesofcoralcity #sirenia #cutiepie #seapotato #seacow #closeup #coral #coralhead #coralcitycamera #miami #portmiami #biscaynebay #coralcity

Specimen of Bartramia ithyphylla collected in south Wales by Jane Talbot, within the herbarium of her cousin William Henry Fox Talbot

‘Bryum compactum’ from Cromlyn Bog, Glamorganshire, collected by Jane Talbot, from the herbarium of her cousin William Henry Fox Talbot

From about 1814 to 1820 Jane Talbot and several members of her extended family developed a particular interest in mosses, learning about them via books, microscopes, correspondence and being out in the field.

My new article is open access in BJHS dx.doi.org/10.1017/S000... #BookHistory #bryology

Poster for online workshop Wild or Domestic? Research on Artificial Bird Nesting Sites. May 6, 2025.

A black and white photograph of two men on ladders resting on a tree. One is holding a camera while the other poses beside a metal canister wood duck nest. The bird emerges from the entrance. 1966, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Looking forward to next week’s online workshop “Wild or Domestic? Research on Artificial Bird Nesting Sites” organized by @dollyjorgensen.bsky.social & Thomas Reitmaier. I’ll be discussing wood duck conservation via nest boxes and the film Wood Duck Ways (1956) [linked below] #envhist #animalhist