Seeds of Thought: A Lunchtime Talk with Dr Laurence Talairach
Schedule
Wed Apr 08 2026 at 12:30 pm to 01:30 pm
UTC+01:00Location
St Andrews Botanic Garden | St Andrews, SC
About this Event
Join us for our final talk in our Treasures of the Deep Series:
Dr Laurence Talairach on Margaret Gatty’s Herbarium at St Andrews Botanic Garden
The Herbarium at St Andrews Botanic Garden holds the algae collections of Margaret Gatty (1809–1873), a celebrated children’s writer and the editor of the Victorian periodical Aunt Judy’s Magazine. Although Gatty collected in several places in the British Isles, her herbarium contains specimens from around the world which this lunchtime talk will explore. As will be seen, Margaret Gatty, like many of her fellow practitioners, developed an international network of collectors. She also collaborated with other women, sharing hints about how to practice collecting, preserving, displaying and classifying, and teaching generations of women how to practice science.
Laurence Talairach is Professor of Victorian Literature at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès and associate researcher at the Alexandre-Koyré Center, Paris. Her academic interests span medicine, natural history and British literature in the long nineteenth century. Her current research looks at the forms of natural history knowledge produced by British women in the nineteenth century, and aims to examine the relationship between scientific knowledge and popular representations so as to reassess female natural historians’ scientific expertise. She has been appointed a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) for 2025–2030 and senior Global fellow at the University of St Andrews for 2025–2026.
About Seeds of Thought
Join us for a series of lunchtime talks with researchers, thinkers, artists, creatives, and like-minded individuals.
We invite you to a menu of fascinating ideas over lunch. Together, we’ll consider how changes, at various scales of time and space, reflect the broader ecological crisis and explore ways to engage with these shifts, both practically and imaginatively.
Free for St Andrews Botanic Garden Friends Members, £3 for visitors
Where is it happening?
St Andrews Botanic Garden, Canongate, St Andrews, United KingdomEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
GBP 0.00 to GBP 3.00
