Lead
William Tullett
Associate Professor in Sensory History, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.
I am an interdisciplinary sensory historian whose work focuses on smell (with a little bit of work on sound) in the west from 1600 to the present day. My first book was Smell in Eighteenth-Century England: A Social Sense (Oxford University Press, 2019) and I am currently writing a mini-book on smell history and heritage methodology titled Smell and the Past: Archives, Narratives, and Heritage for the Cambridge University Press ‘Histories of Emotions and the Senses’ series of Elements. I am a work package lead on the EU-Horizon-2020-funded project Odeuropa, which has funded the creation of the PastScent network.
Keywords: 1600-present; everyday life; gender; material culture; urban; science, medicine, and technology; environment; perfume.
https://aru.ac.uk/people/william-tullett
Advisory Board
Inger Leemans
Professor of Cultural History at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Director of NL-Lab, KNAW Humanities Cluster, PI of the Odeuropa Project.
My research focuses on early modern cultural history (1500-1850), the history of emotions and the body, history of knowledge and digital humanities. I am a member of the scientific board of the EU JPI Cultural Heritage, of the Dutch National Research Council for Cultural Heritage, and of the National Council for Dutch Language and Culture (Dutch Language Union) – advising the Dutch & Flemish Secretaries of Education & Culture.I have coordinated or collaborated on several digital humanities projects: Embodied Emotions (developing a model for emotion mining) (Nederlab – Netherlands eScience Center); Visualizing uncertainty & Quality and perspectives in ‘deep data’ (AAA Data Science project), CLARIAH+, Golden Agents, and REPUBLIC. Currently, I am working on a cultural history of stock trading, analysing how the early modern public tried to make sense of the ‘financial wizardry’ of the stock market. Alongside being the Principal Investigator on the Odeuropa project I am also working on a collaborative dictionary of Dutch smell words.
Keywords: Cultural History; Dutch; Olfactory heritage; Sensory Mining; Emotions; Economy; Odeuropa; Early Modern; Literature; Language.
https://ingerleemans.wordpress.com/over/
Cecilia Bembibre
Lecturer in Sustainable Heritage, UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage
I am interested in an interdisciplinary approach to thinking about smell as cultural heritage. Drawing from heritage science perspectives, I developed a framework to preserve smells with cultural significance, and I am now working on developing policy strategies for the protection of olfactory heritage. Other areas of interest are studying the impact of presenting scents in museums from a conservation and interpretation viewpoint, and collaborating with industries to explore the potential of instrumental characterisation of historic odours.
Keywords: Smell preservation, authenticity, odour/VOC analysis, olfactory heritage, heritage science
Andrew Kettler
Visiting Assistant Professor of History, Kenyon College
Andrew has published dozens of articles, review essays, and reviews on the history of the senses, and serves as Secretary at H-Net, Editor at H-History-Theory, Co-Editor at H-Atlantic, Book Review Editor at H-Slavery, and Book Review Editor at Sound Studies. His first monograph, The Smell of Slavery: Olfactory Racism and the Atlantic World (Cambridge University Press, 2020) focuses on the importance of aromatic consciousness in the making of Atlantic era resistance to the olfactory discourses of state, religious, and slave masters.
Key words: Atlantic World; Critical Theory; Racism; Early Modern Era
https://kenyon.academia.edu/AndrewKettler
Kate McLean
Programme Director Graphic Design, University of Kent
My academic research examines qualitatively-perceived spatial and temporal characteristics of the olfactory landscape, known as the smellscape, through mapping practices. Concerned with representation and communication of the smellscape as theorised by J. Douglas Porteous and activated by Victoria Henshaw, the practice-based research explores how social performative mapping might contribute to communication of non-visual sensory olfactory information. Recent work includes creative design-led approaches to mapping historical smellscapes through animation and one-dimensional itinerary maps.
Keywords: Smellscape, design, cartography, representation, smellwalk
Érika Wicky
Visiting Fellow, European University Institute
I work on the history of knowledge (scientific, professional, aesthetic, specialized, survival, etc.) acquired through the sense of smell from 18th-century to nowadays. As part of this project, I am currently carrying out a historical investigation of the smell of paint (18th-20th century). I am also involved in several collaborative projects: on music and perfume (with Sarah Barbedette), on smell and gender stereotypes (with Mathilde Leïchlé), on the material culture of perfume (with Sophie-Valentine Borloz, Frank Krause and Sergej Rickenbacher).
Keywords: 18th century to nowadays (with an emphasis on the 19th century); France / Europe; knowledge; gender; material culture; perfume
https://eui.academia.edu/%C3%89rikaWicky
Lizzie Marx
PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge, Team Member, Odeuropa
My research concerns exploring the visualisation, perception, and meanings of smell in Early Modern art. The results of the research are working towards developing an iconography of the olfactory, and promoting the incorporation of the olfactory in museum and heritage contexts. Through collaborating with Odeuropa computer scientists, I also explore how computer vision can help to develop research into smell in the History of Art.
Keywords: Early Modern Art, Dutch Republic, Olfactory Museology, Olfactory Iconography, Computer Vision
https://www.hoart.cam.ac.uk/people/elizabeth-sarah-marx
Stuart Eve
FSA MCIfA, Research Associate in Digital Heritage at Bournemouth University; Partner at L – P : Archaeology.
My research focuses on the archaeological evidence for smell. I am particularly interested in the confluence between technology and past smells. I have worked on a number of multi-sensory projects, including the “Dead Man’s Nose” – a mobile ‘scent dispenser’ that emits scents dependent on the user’s geographic location.
Keywords: Archaeology; Augmented Reality; Digital Heritage; Battle of Waterloo; Prehistory
http://www.dead-mens-eyes.org
Members
Ally Louks
PhD student at University of Cambridge
My PhD, titled ‘Olfactory Ethics: Smell and Discrimination in Modernity’, examines the role of olfactory language and perception in the construction of personal and group alterity. My research attends to olfactory prejudice towards a number of marginalised groups, drawing from a wide corpus of post-1945 authors and theorists.
Keywords: Literature, Culture, Theory, Malodour, Discrimination
https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/people/graduates/Amelia.Louks
Bodo Mrozek
Research associate at the Berlin Center for Cold War Studies of the Leibniz-institute for Contemporary History (IfZ).
I am currently writing a transnational smell history of the 20th century. The main areas of research are conflicts about the environment and exhaust emissions, indoor smells and pollutants, changes in hygiene and cosmetics, the politicization of scents and the perfume industry, as well as “sensory warfare”. The research focuses on the development of diverging smellscapes in urban, rural, and industrial spaces via contemporary documents.
Keywords: Olfactory history of the 20th Century; pollution; environmental smells, urban and rural smell scapes, olfactory warfare, olfactory forensics, hygiene, modern perfumery, Europe, France, Great Britain, Germany
Jonathan Reinarz
Professor in the History of Medicine, University of Birmingham.
I’m interested in the history of the senses, especially smell in the 19th and 20th centuries, with a particular interest in smell, class and medicine. I’m the author of the book, Past Scents: Historical Perspectives on Smell (2014) and edited a special issue of the Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies on the senses (2012).
Keywords: nineteenth century, medicine, public health, class, hospitals
https://audioboom.com/posts/2260577-professor-jonathan-reinarz-the-history-of-smell-ep56
Martin Lindner
Lecturer in Ancient History and Curator of the Tom Stern Film Archive, University of Göttingen, Germany
My main research interests lie in imperial Roman history, cultural history and classical reception. While I have written extensively on the reception of antiquity in films, games, comics etc., my connection to (historical) smells stem from side projects on reenactment and museum education.
Keywords: antiquity, classical reception, imperial Rome, reenactment, museum education
https://uni-goettingen.de/de/428237.html
Emma Paolin
PhD student at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology
I am a PhD student on the ODOTHEKA project. The ODOTHEKA project aims to develop an international archive of smells of heritage objects. The main goals are to characterize and reproduce odours of selected historical objects from the collections of the National Museum of Krakow, and the National Museum of Slovenia; to examine the historical significance and catalogue odours with the aim to develop the Odotheka archive; and to explore how such odours can be displayed effectively and safely and examine the added value of olfactory experience to object interpretation and visitors.
Keywords: Slovenia and Poland, Archive, Smells of heritage objects, Olfactory experience
https://hslab.fkkt.uni-lj.si/2021/09/24/odotheka-exploring-and-archiving-heritage-smells/
Giacomo Savani
Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Classics, University College Dublin
My research interests lie in the field of Roman social and cultural history and the reception of Antiquity in Early Modern Europe. I am currently investigating the study and reception of Roman baths among early-modern antiquarians, architects, and physicians in Italy, France, and England from 1400 to 1800. In my work, I use sensory archaeology theory, especially Yannis Hamilakis’ sensorial assemblage theory, to engage with the role of smell and the other senses in both ancient baths and their reception in nineteenth-century European paintings.
Keywords: Ancient Senses; Smell in Antiquity; Roman Baths; Classical Reception; Sensorial Assemblage
https://people.ucd.ie/giacomo.savani
Mojca Ramšak
Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Ljubljana.
I am preparing a scholarly monograph titled “Anthropology of Smell,” which will be published in Slovene in 2022. I have also published two scientific studies on anthropological smell perception, both in Slovene, as well as a professional article in the history of medicine.
Keywords: smell, anthropology, cultural history, history of medicine, medical anthropology
https://www.ff.uni-lj.si/en/staff/mojca-ramsak
Federico Kukso
Independent science journalist from Argentina, board member of the World Federation of Science Journalists.
I am the author of the book Odorama: Historia Cultural del Olor (Odorama: Cultural History of Smell, Penguin Random House, 2019). I am interested in telling stories about the past, present and future of smell to the general public, especially from a global perspective: generally, studies on smell are very Eurocentric. In my case, I also explore the olfactory history of Latin America and the place of smells in pop culture (movies, series, literature, art, VR, etc.).
Keywords: Latin America; global stories; Smells in Pop Culture; Science of Smell; Future of Smell.
Clare Hickman
Senior Lecturer in History, Newcastle University
I am exploring how sensory approaches, such as a focus on smell, can be used to make new connections between environmental and medical histories. In particular I have written on the cultural history of pine scent in relation to concepts of health and wellbeing. I am also interested in how the sensory can be used in order to develop new interpretations, particularly in relation to historic landscapes, in order to make heritage more inclusive and accessible.
Key words: Landscapes, early modern and modern history, environment, health
https://drclarehickman.wordpress.com/
James McHugh
Associate Professor, University of Southern California
I am a scholar of pre-modern South Asia, mainly working with textual sources. My first book, Sandalwood and Carrion, was a wide ranging historical study of the sense of smell and perfumery in Indian cultures and religions. This project also involved fieldwork with perfumers in India and a collaboration with perfumer Christophe Laudamiel. I currently work on the history of alcohol in India, and have published a book, An Unholy Brew, on this topic.
Keywords: India, ancient, medieval, aromatics, Hinduism
https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1022649
Xuelei Huang
Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies, University of Edinburgh
My current research focuses on sensory history (olfactory history in particular) in modern China. My forthcoming book, provisionally entitled The Social Life of Smell in Modern China (Cambridge University Press), revisits modern Chinese history through the “perspective” of the nose. I critically interrogates what may be called an olfactory revolution in China, bringing to light complex socio-corporeal dynamics underlying the untold stories of stinking ditches, artificial scents, sexual odours, and foul class enemies.
Keywords: modern history, China, cultural history, sensory studies, olfactory revolution
https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/xuelei-huang
Hsuan L. Hsu
Professor of English, University of California, Davis.
I approach smell in three ways: as an embodied capacity for perceiving and communicating about environmental risk, as a sensory capacity that has been used in various ways to stigmatize BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities, and as a derecognized mode of imbibing and interacting with others. My focus is on olfactory cultural production, olfactory racialization, and BIPOC olfactory practices in and around the post-1850s United States–for example, discourses about the stench of Chinatowns, novels that frame smell as at once an intimate and infrastructural issue, and olfactory artworks that deploy smell as a medium for conveying the uneven risks of air pollution.
Keywords: race studies, environmental justice, American studies, racial capitalism, aesthetics https://english.ucdavis.edu/people/hlhsu
Catherine Maxwell
Professor of Victorian Literature, The School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London
My 2018 monograph Scents and Sensibility: Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture (OUP, 2018) examined the role played by perfume and scent in the work of a range of poets and prose writers, including Algernon Swinburne, Walter Pater, Michael Field, and Oscar Wilde. It focused on the period 1860-1900, though also touched on early twentieth-century literature, taking in Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and Compton Mackenzie. Essays written after the monograph explore scent in the work of Vernon Lee and Arthur Machen. My next book project ‘The Flowers of Victorian Poetry’, contracted to OUP, will also include some material on floral scent.
Keywords: Victorian, Perfume, Scent, Flowers, Decadence
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sed/staff/maxwellc.html
Béatrice Caseau Chevallier
Full professor in Byzantine history, Sorbonne university, Senior member of the Institut universitaire de France
My Phd (Princeton university 1994) was on the Christianization of perfume. I studied the importance of smell in identifying danger for health and well-being and the use of aromatics and incense to replace bad smell with a pleasing odor. I then focussed on the ecclesiastical use of perfumes (holy chrism and incenses).
Keywords: Late Antiquity, Byzantine history, religious anthropology, odoriphobia, odoriphilia
https://sorbonne-fr.academia.edu/BeatriceCaseau
Emily C. Friedman
Associate Professor of English, Director, 18thConnect.org
Dr. Friedman is the author of Reading Smell in Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Bucknell 2016). Her olfactory research focuses on the language and connotations of smell over time.
Keywords: eighteenth-century, fiction, novel, olfactory language, book history
Jessica P. Clark
Associate Professor of History, Brock University
My book project, Scents of Change: Experiencing Modernity in Britain, 1880-1930, mobilizes smell to interrogate histories of British modernity, culture, and identity from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. I explore historical descriptions of smell to understand the ways that certain groups—and especially the urban poor, foreign nationals, and colonized people—were included and excluded from dominant narratives of fin de siècle belonging and experience. In doing so, the project aligns with ongoing work demonstrating that modernity was not only a visual phenomenon, as is so often emphasized, and was, in fact, defined through a range of sensory registers.
Keywords: Britain, fin de siècle, modernity, nationalism, identity
https://brocku.ca/humanities/history/faculty-staff/jessica-clark/
Cari Casteel
Clinical Assistant Professor at University at Buffalo
I am working on a manuscript on the social and cultural history of deodorant in the United States. In it I will explore the ways that body odor (or lack thereof) further exacerbated and solidified societal stratification. I am particularly interested in deodorant as a gendering technology.
Keywords: United States, gender, technology, deodorant, perspiration
Twitter: @thedeodorantone
Katelynn Robinson
Independent scholar
Research interests: Katelynn Robinson researches the sense of smell in the Middle Ages in all its aspects, particularly theories of olfaction. Her first book examines scientific, medical, and theological olfactory theory in central and late medieval Europe and demonstrates some ways that theory was applied in lived contexts.
Keywords: Middle Ages, medieval, Europe, olfactory theory, history of science
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Katelynn-Robinson
Christy Spackman
Assistant Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, School of Arts, Media, and Engineering, Arizona State University
I research how olfactory cues shape (and shaped) people’s relationship to the environment, as well as the work that goes into managing olfactory cues.
Keywords: 20th century, North America & Europe, Flavor & Fragrance Industry, environmental smells, sensory politics, gender politics
Jaakko Suominen
Professor of Digital Culture, University of Turku
I have studied from cultural historical perspective how users recollect computer use related smells and I’m going to widen this research to other technological artifacts and their use.
Keywords: cultural history, cultural heritage, digital culture, game culture studies
https://www.utu.fi/en/people/jaakko-suominen
Lisa Wynne Smith
Senior Lecturer, University of Essex
In my work on early modern households in England and France, there are three areas pertaining to scent that interest me in particular. 1. the sensory experience of food and medicine preparation (e.g. reading recipes for smells and textures). 2. the smells of illness for caregivers and sufferers, both in terms of embodiment and the experience of the sick room. 3. the taste of food (which, of course, overlaps with smell) and individual taste profiles within a household.
Keywords: Early modern, food, illness, caregiving, recipes
https://www.essex.ac.uk/people/smith62403/lisa-smith
Rowan Rose Boyson
Senior Lecturer in English, KCL
I have published several articles relating to smell in Romantic poetry, and its intellectual and historical contexts: e.g. on Shelley’s materialist interest in scent, and on Wordsworth’s anosmia. I am broadly interested in the history and philosophy of smell. Currently I am working on a book about the history of attitudes towards the air as a common or shared resource, in which smell figures significantly as an important apprehension of the shared-ness of air.
Keywords: Enlightenment, Romanticism, Environment, Philosophy, Politics
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/dr-rowan-boyson
Kara C. Hoover
Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Our senses collect information from the environment and have been dynamically tuned across evolutionary time to meet survival, reproductive, and, in some species, social needs. Thus, the perceptual worlds of species are highly differentiated from one another and often do not overlap. My interest is human olfaction and how it is used as a mechanism for obtaining information from the environment. I liken the nose to an environmental probes that detects food, mates, and danger. My collaborative work on population genetics and the functional expression of olfactory genes has focused on the olfactory repertoire of the genus Homo and found that humans exhibit increased variation in olfactory repertoires but share most variation with closely related extinct lineages. I am also working on documenting differences in olfactory functioning and ability as well as understanding the frequency with which gene variations cause functional variation and result in perceptual changes of odors. I have also examined the role of the built environment in shaping and harming olfaction in contemporary societies as part of a larger body of work on sensory inequities. This work is a platform for a study examining taste and smell changes in COVID-19 when considering race and socio-economic factors.
Laurence Totelin
Reader in Ancient History, Cardiff University
I’m a historian of Greek and Roman science, technology, and medicine, with specific focuses on pharmacology, botany, and gynaecology. I pay particular attention to sensory aspects of these disciplines, and the sense that interests me the most is smell: the ways in which the smells of plants and other pharmacological substances were described in antiquity; ancient theories of smell; and the ways in which the smell of human bodies and their bodily fluids were perceived. I’m currently working on ancient cosmetics, trying to move away from a narrow understanding of ‘cosmetics’ (as perfumes and makeup) to a broader one (including initimate cosmetics, cosmetics for the feet and the armpits, etc).
Keywords: Antiquity; Greece; Rome; cosmetics; pharmacy
https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/73040-totelin-laurence
Evelyn Welch
Professor of Renaissance Studies, King’s College London
I am a Renaissance/Early Modern scholar of Europe. I have a long-standing interest in the senses, material culture and consumption. I have written on perfumed gloves and other goods and the use of scent as a poison and as a preservative. I have also written on the use of smell as part of a mercantile culture that used sensory information to assess the authenticity, quality and value of goods.
Keywords: Renaissance; Early Modern; Italy; Europe; Consumption
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/evelyn-welch-fkc
Emily (Milly) Cockayne
Associate Professor, University of East Anglia
My interest in the history of smell is wide-ranging, from 1600-1900, and focus on moments in time when smells created problems for neighbours, consumers or manufacturers. I have written about smells in all of my published books to date: Hubbub (2007); Cheek by Jowl (2012); Rummage (2020). I am currently* writing about fumes and pollution in Bermondsey in the late-eighteenth century.
Keywords: Coal tar / pollution / fumes / England / industry
Jane Draycott
Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Glasgow
I work on ancient health and well-being, and am particularly interested in ancient medicine and pharmacy, drugs, cosmetics, and perfumes. I have also worked on ancient botany and gardens.
Keywords: Ancient Rome, Roman, Health, Medicine, Flowers, Herbs, Gardens, Perfumes, Cosmetics
https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/janedraycott/
Roos van Oosten
University Lecturer, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University
I am an historical archaeologist who has studied the transition from cesspits to sewers in the Low Countries and coined the phrase ‘the Dutch great stink’. In the future, I plan to expand my scholarship on the theme of smell-scape management by examining historical policies of concentrating dirty jobs in particular areas of a town.
Keywords: Medieval and post-Medieval, Low Countries, cesspits, sanitation management
https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/roos-van-oosten#t
Alex Rhys-Taylor
Senior lecturer in Sociology, Goldsmiths
I’m an urban sociologist, interested in the historical sensoria and sensibilities of cities. I’m interested in these sensoria and sensibilities, with a view to understanding their impact on life in the 21st century post-colonial city.
Keywords: East London, 20th-21st century, Street Markets, Taste, Disgust
https://www.gold.ac.uk/sociology/staff/rhys-taylor
Barbara Huber
PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Biochemistry group
My research investigates the global dimensions of the dispersal of ancient aromatics and spices throughout Asia and East Africa using biomolecular analyses to characterize past organic residues. I study the use of scented plants, perfumes, ointments, and resins alongside the incense and spice routes using biomolecular fingerprinting of plant secondary metabolites, lipids, and proteins. Ultimately, I’m providing aroma to the archaeology of the ancient world, allowing archaeologists to explore a previously unstudied dimension of the past.
Keywords: Archaeology of the senses, Organic residues analysis, Biomolecular and omics applications, Incense and Spice routes, Ancient Egypt
https://www.shh.mpg.de/person/100725/25522
Sofia Collette Ehrich
Olfactory Event Coordinator and Researcher on the Odeuropa Project
My research interests in smell are both historical and practical. I have been researching the best methods and practices of incorporating smell and scents into heritage institutions and how these methods and the scent itself can best support the historical context in which it represents. I am also a strong advocate of a multisensory approach within the museum as it broadens inclusivity, accessibility and engagement.
Keywords: Olfactory Museology; Cultural Heritage; The Senses within Film & Media Studies; Crossmodal Perception; Scent Distribution
Victoria-Anne Michel
PhD student at Odeuropa.
I’m interested in understanding how people experience smells in a space and how smellscapes participate in making sense of place. My PhD research is about smellscapes in GLAMs (galleries, libraries, archives and museums), particularly the way they are experienced and shaped by GLAMs professionals, space designers and visitors. I’m using sensuous methodologies investigation such as smellwalks and semi-structured interviews.
Keywords: Smellscapes; GLAMs; Place identity; Europe; Smellwalks.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-anne-michel-934780138
Sophie-Valentine Borloz
Senior FNS Researcher, Lausanne University.
My focus is on 19th-century French olfactory imagination and its associations with perversion. Through the interplay of literary and medical texts, I look at the way medical practitioners and writers exchange ideas and notions on smell-related conditions, and collaborate to create a new productive nosological figure, that of the olfactory pervert.
Keywords: 19th-century French literature; Olfactory perversion; Cultural History of Smell; History of medicine; Protosexology
https://applicationspub.unil.ch/interpub/noauth/php/Un/UnPers.php?PerNum=1067434&LanCode=37
Anuradha Gobin
Associate Professor of Art History
University of Calgary, Canada
I am an art historian specializing in early modern Northern Europe and its Atlantic colonies. My research focuses on material culture associated with marginal bodies such as criminals and slaves. It highlights the importance of sensory studies in recuperating acts of resistance and displays of agency.
Keywords: Art History, Early Modern, Sensory Studies, Marginal Bodies
https://art.ucalgary.ca/profiles/anuradha-gobin
Frank Krause
Professor of German, Goldsmith’s University
I am interested in:
(i) the rhetorical use of corpse stench motifs in German, French and English Literature of the First World War;
(ii) smell motifs in Modernist works, with emphasis on Expressionism (André Gide, Thomas Mann; Carl Einstein, Bruno Taut, Wenzel August Hablik, Alfred Brust, Hermann Finsterlin);
(iii) the history of smell-sound synaesthesiae;
(iv) the religious significance of smells in literary approaches to nature since the Enlightenment: from Barthold Heinrich Brockes to Peter Handke (in progress).
Keywords: corpse stench; sacralisation; synaesthesia; religiosity; nature
Link to on-line profile: https://www.gold.ac.uk/ecw/staff/f-krause/
Jacob Baum
Associate Professor of History, Texas Tech University
I have previously written about smell in late medieval and early modern German religious practice, specifically focusing on incense ritual and the use of pomanders in personal devotions. Currently, I am interested in the roles played by smells in peoples’ understandings of health and well-being in later medieval and early modern Europe. In particular, I am interested in the connections between smells and diseases, how the authority of smell in medical theory evolved over the early modern centuries, and the ways in which good and bad smells were regulated as matters of both public health policy, and personal health regimens. I am also interested in tracking down references in early modern ego-documents that make specific connections between smell and disease during times of plague or other epidemic diseases.
Keywords: Germany, 1400-1800, religion, medicine, public health & hygiene.
https://www.depts.ttu.edu/history/faculty/profiles/baum_jacob.php
Roos van Oosten
University Lecturer, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University
I am an historical archaeologist who has studied the transition from cesspits to sewers in the Low Countries and coined the phrase ‘the Dutch great stink’. In the future, I plan to expand my scholarship on the theme of smell-scape management by examining historical policies of concentrating dirty jobs in particular areas of a town.
Keywords: Medieval and post-Medieval, Low Countries, cesspits, sanitation management
https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/roos-van-oosten#t
Shane Butler
Hall Professor in the Humanities, Department of Classics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
I am primarily a literary critic and historian who writes broadly on aesthetics, sensation, embodiment, and materiality, with a particular but non-exclusive emphasis on classical antiquity and its reception. I was co-editor of the six-volume series “The Senses in Antiquity” (Routledge), which saw the republication of my own study on the history of one of the ancient world’s most prized perfumes. More recent work largely concerns eighteenth- and nineteenth-century aesthetic thinkers (including participants in the so-called Aesthetic Movement), partly in relation to the history of sexuality.
Keywords: Perfume, Literature, Aesthetics, Classics, Victorians
https://johnshopkins.academia.edu/ShaneButler
Sergej Rickenbacher
Research Assistant, RWTH Aachen
My current project is on smells in German and French literature from the 18th century to the present. One focus is on the mediality of olfaction and its reflection in literature. I am as well generally interested in the question of how to write about a phenomenon that occurs relatively rarely.
Keywords: literature and olfaction, mediality of olfaction, art and olfaction, 18th century, 19th century, 20th century
Sophie Read
Senior Lecturer in English, University of Cambridge
I am interested in perfume, spices, scent and the sense of smell more generally in renaissance literary contexts – primarily plays and lyric poetry. I have published essays on ambergris in Browne and Herrick, and incense in George Herbert: I am currently working on a monograph that extends this work (provisionally entitled Speaking Sweet: Renaissance Rhetorics of Scent).
Keywords: Perfume, incense, spice, renaissance, poetry
https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/people/Sophie.Read
Claudia Liebelt
Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Free University of Berlin
I am interested in the toxic anxieties, fragrant desires and more generally the affects surrounding the usage of fragrant substances. As a social and cultural anthropologist with research foci in the Anthropology of the Body and the Senses, religion, gender and sexuality, I am interested in the affective grounding and configuration of smell, odours and scents in relation to cultural notions of hygiene and aesthetics. Current projects investigate the gendered consumption of perfume and fragrances in the contemporary Middle East and Turkey; the revitalization of cologne and its role as a hand sanitizer in Turkey’s dealing with the COVID-19 crisis; and processes of sensual subject formation, olfactory anxieties and racialization in Berlin as a „postmigrant“ urban context.
Keywords: Anthropology of the Body and the Senses, modern perfumery, hygiene, consumption, olfactory racism, contemporary history, Middle East and Turkey
https://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/en/ethnologie/personen/professorinnen/liebelt/index.html
Cheryl Krueger
Associate Professor of French, University of Virginia (USA)
I am a specialist in 19th-century French literature, interested in the era’s intersecting cultures of literature and perfume. I have spoken and published widely on the topic in France, the UK, and the US.
Key words: nineteenth century, France, perfume, history, literature
https://french.as.virginia.edu/people/profile/clk6m
Duane Jethro
Junior Research Fellow, Centre for Curating the Archive, University of Cape Town, South Africa
I work on the cultural construction of heritage and contested public cultures, and am interested in the co-construction of smell and aroma and heritage claims, as illustrated in my work on smell and forced removal in the city of Cape Town, South Africa.
Key words: heritage, material culture, religion, aesthetics and the senses
http://www.cca.uct.ac.za/cca/people/duane-jethro
Mathilde Cocoual
PhD in History, Research Fellow at “Centre de la Méditerranée Moderne et Contemporaine”, Université Côte d’Azur; director of Historic View company (historic consulting)
I study the history of raw materials used in perfumery and the consequences of perfume industry on the perfume plants location in the world during the Contemporary period. I’m also interesting about the link with others business: cosmetic, fashion, technology, etc. I’m specialised on Grasse factories history also.
Keywords: Grasse city, Contemporary period, Raw materials, processes, History, center of production.
https://www.facebook.com/Histoire-des-plantes-%C3%A0-parfum-718042281984390
Chanelle Dupuis
PhD Candidate in French and Francophone Studies at Brown University
My research explores the link between smells and trauma in French literature from the 20th century. I am interested in understanding smellscapes through literature and mapping environments. I also work on smells and environmental change. Specifically, I look at smell as an indicator of environmental change and study smells in the Amazon (South America).
Keywords: French literature, Trauma, Smellscapes, Environments, Amazonia
https://chanelledupuis2.wixsite.com/my-site
Dr Hannah Platts
Senior Lecturer in Ancient History and Archaeology
I am an interdisciplinary historian and archaeologist with a particular interest in exploring and reconstructing multisensory experiences of the past. I am the author of “Multisensory Living in Ancient Rome: Power and Space in Roman Houses” (Bloomsbury Academic 2019), which explores how sensory experiences, including that of smell, were manipulated in order to display social status, hierarchy and belonging in the Roman domestic realm. I have also been examining how we might bring the bodily senses, such as smell, into visitor experiences of historic sites and how far this enables the telling of new stories of the past whilst widening audience access, especially for those with sensory impairments and ASD. As such, as well as working on projects mapping smell in virtual reality reconstructions of historic sites, I am currently working on a project around olfactory experience in Augmented Reality at heritage sites.
Keywords: Ancient Rome; domestic space; archaeology of olfaction; olfactory heritage; smell reconstruction and mapping in heritage.