Sachiko Kusukawa, Principal Investigator
Sachiko is a Fellow in the History and Philosophy of Science at Trinity College, Cambridge. Her research specialism is in the fields of history of science, cultural and intellectual history, the history of the book and libraries. Her recent research has focused on the observational, descriptive and pictorial practices in the development and production of scientific knowledge in the early modern period (1500-1720). She was co-investigator in the AHRC-funded research project on ‘Diagrams, figures and the transformation of astronomy 1450-1650‘ (Dept of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge), which examined the function of astronomical figures and diagrams in early modern astronomy, and Principal Investigator of an international network, ‘Origins of Science as a Visual Pursuit: the case of the early Royal Society‘ also funded by the AHRC. She is the author of Picturing the book of nature: image, text and argument in sixteenth-century human anatomy and medical botany (2012), and has curated an on-line exhibition of Andreas Vesalius, ‘Vivitur ingenio‘, which was featured by the BBC.
Felicity Henderson, Co-Investigator
Felicity’s broad topic is 17th century intellectual culture, and within this she is interested in early-modern institutions (particularly the universities and the early Royal Society) and the circulation of ideas through manuscript, image and print. As part of the ‘Making Visible’ project she will be completing a new edition of the diary of Robert Hooke, a document that sheds interesting light on the relationships and exchange of information between early-modern scientific practitioners and people from other spheres in Restoration London. In particular she will be examining Hooke’s relationships with ‘makers’ of all kinds, and with those connected with the Restoration book trade.
Alexander Marr, Co-Investigator
Alex is University Lecturer in the History of Art, 1400-1700, in the Department of History of Art and a Fellow of Trinity Hall. He specializes in Early Modern art and architecture, particularly their intellectual and scientific aspects. He has published on Italian, French, Netherlandish, German and British topics. Dr Marr is currently editing Richard Haydocke’s 1598 translation of Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’arte de la pittura for the Modern Humanities Research Association’s new Tudor & Stuart Translations series. He is also working on a cultural history of the concept of ingenuity from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century and is the Principal Investigator of Genius Before Romanticism: Ingenuity in Early Modern Art and Science, an ERC-funded research project at CRASSH. Dr Marr has received awards and fellowships from, among others, the Huntington Library, the Max Planck Institute for History of Science, and the British Academy. In 2008 he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize for his ‘outstanding contribution’ to the history of art. In 2011 he was Robert H. Smith Scholar in Residence for Renaissance Sculpture in Context at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Sietske Fransen, Research Associate
Sietske’s main interests are the early modern history of science and medicine, intellectual history and history of the book, especially in the Low Countries, Germany and England. She completed her PhD at the Warburg Institute (London) on the Flemish physician Jan Baptista van Helmont in the context of the use of language and translation in the seventeenth-century medical texts. While continuing to use the concept of translation, she is now focusing on the role, function and application of visualisations in the acquisition of early modern scientific knowledge. By comparing working practices of university and non-university educated practitioners of science, through both printed books and manuscripts and notebooks, her project will shed light on the changing use of visualisations in the early modern period. The innovations in medium (manuscript to printed book) and language (Latin to vernacular) enforced major adaptations in scientific communication, in which images, diagrams, lists and tables played an intriguing part. During the academic year 2014-15 Sietske worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Department II) in Berlin.
Katherine Reinhart, Research Associate
Katie recently completed her PhD in the History of Art and the University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research examined the visual culture of the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris from 1666-1715, and the epistemic and political functions of images in the early Academy. Her current project expands this research to the Royal Society exploring issues of graphic skill, visual and scientific practice, patronage structures, knowledge production, and the political uses of images. Prior to Cambridge, Katie earned her B.A. in Art History and History of Science at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and obtained her M.A. in History of Science and Technology from Johns Hopkins University. She has also worked in museums.
Judith Weik, Project Administrator
Judith is the administrator for the AHRC-funded project Making Visible: The visual and graphic practices of the early Royal Society and the Cambridge Centre for Digital Knowledge.
