Déborah Dubald
Déborah Dubald is a partner of the Sinergia project “An interdisciplinary model to explain neverending infectious diseases. The case of syphilis, from 1859 to the present” as a postdoctoral researcher at the Sociétés, Acteurs, Gouvernements en Europe laborartory at the University of Strasbourg. She is conducting a research project on the uses of medical collections, from instruments to human remains, in interdisciplinary research in the present.
She holds a PhD in History from the European University Institute in Florence (2019), entitled “Capital Nature: a History of French Municipal Museums of Natural History, 1795-1870”, (hdl.handle.net/1814/6530) for which she won the James Kaye Memorial Prize in 2020.
She is a specialist of modern material cultures of science, with a particular focus on the themes of nature, the environment, collections and museums in the nineteenth century. Rooted in a social history of science, her work documents and analyses socially and spatially differentiated practices of science and knowledge.
She recently co-edited with Catarina Madruga (Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin) a special issue for the Journal of History of Knowledge It was published at the end of 2022 and is entitled “Situated Nature: Field collecting and local knowledge in the nineteenth century” (https://journalhistoryknowledge.org/situated-nature).
Research
History of scientific and medical collections and museum in the modern age ; material cultures of science; history of nature and the environment; history of science and knowledge practices;
Publications
2022
- “Off the beaten path? Frédéric Cailliaud’s bureaucratic practice of geological fieldwork in the Lower Loire, 1836-1869”, The Journal for the History of Knowledge, III, vol. 2. https://doi.org/10.55283/jhk.11952
- (with avec Catarina Madruga)“Introduction. Situated Nature: Field Collecting and Local Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century”, The Journal for the History of Knowledge, III, vol. 2. https://doi.org/10.55283/jhk.11379
- « Savante bureaucratie : le Journal de Jourdan (1854‑1868) et l’administration quotidienne du Muséum de Lyon », Revue d’Histoire du xixe siècle, vol. 64, 193-207. https://journals.openedition.org/rh19/8307
2021
- « “Un vaste local pour y étaler ses richesses“ : inaugurer la Galerie de Zoologie à Lyon en 1837 », Cahiers François Viète, vol. III-10, 183-215. https://journals.openedition.org/cahierscfv/413
Invited seminar papers (selected)
2022
- “Bureaucratic terrains? The materialisation of knowledge of nature in Lyon”, History of Knowledge seminar, University of Constance, Germany
2021
- “Materialising the underground: objects, papers and a geological map”, Material Cultures of Science Seminar, National Museum of Natural History, Lisbon, Portugal
- « Collections naturalistes et savoirs sur l’humain : l’ambivalente place des objets ethnographiques dans les musées d’histoire naturelle de province au xixe siècle », History of Human Sciences Seminar, org. Nathalie Richard et al., Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris, France
2018
- “Inventorying the Rhone. The Scientific Travels of Claude Jourdan Collecting for the Natural History Museum of Lyon, 1834-1869”, Cabinet of Natural History, History and Philosophy of Science Department, University de Cambridge, Great Britain
2016
- “Local Power and Natural Knowledge: Maires and Natural History Museums in Provincial France”, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine seminar, University of Manchester, Great Britain
