Christoffer Basse Eriksen

Profile

I am an historian of science and ideas with a deep fascination of natural history and its sub-disciplines as they were pursued in the period between 1600 and 1900. I am interested in the various ways in which natural objects – flowers, seeds, salts, insects – have been turned into knowledge, and why. My research spans from studies of mechanical philosophies to hand-coloured herbals, and from preparation of specimens to the design of botanical gardens. My current research examines the Danish production of the multi-volume botanical atlas Flora Danica, and especially how its editors, draughtsmen, and sponsors negotiated ideas of scale, territory, ecology and classification.

I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at Centre for Science Studies, Aarhus University supported by The Carlsberg Foundation. I hold a PhD in History of Ideas from Aarhus University in 2018, and I have previously worked as a postdoctoral fellow at University of Cambridge and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. I am a member of the Danish Young Academy under the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters, and an associate fellow at Aarhus Institute for Advanced Studies, where I also organise the collaborative HiCCS network. My research has been published in journals such as History of Science, British Journal for the History of Science, Nuncius and Centaurus, and I am the recipient of the Royal Society's Lisa Jardine Award, the 2023 Best Article Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender, and the Independent Research Fund Denmark's Annual Honorary Award for the Most Original Research Idea.