Laura Sellers

Last week the Leeds contingent set out for Cambridge for this years BSHS postgraduate conference. A lovely event annual event which allows postgraduates working on the History of Science, Technology and Medicine to meet and share ideas through conference papers and pub trips (primarily). This conference is less formal than the BSHS summer conference so is an excellent opportunity to trial ideas or gain some confidence in presenting.

The temptation to talk about how beautiful (although expensive) Cambridge is is quite strong but I’ll limit myself to saying its worth a visit, it is a shame it wasn’t summer so we could go on the river, and I wish I’d had a bike and more time to visit more of the museums. We went to Kings College and I want the library (in its entirety), although I still don’t understand why there are carvings of unicorn/cricket hybrids in there.

The conference was extremely well organised and the content of the papers varied massively. Papers covered everything from Ontology to Botany, Chemistry to Vitality, and everything in between. We had a strong Leeds contingent as usual so it felt like a super nerdy road trip. There was a particularly good keynote by Patrica Fara on suffragettes and science, which was fascinating but perhaps topped by some postgrads, much braver than I, who took part in the “bright club” which is stand up comedy by academics, and to my surprise it was genuinely funny. Well done to everyone who took part!