I am a cultural historian with an ongoing interest in science, environment, and nature in the modern period. I am especially interested in the perceptions of nature in industrialized societies. I am captivated by the diverse ways modern societies maintain “nature” close at-hand,

encapsulated either physically – in urban parks, nature reserves, or in urban window-boxes – or mentally, by imagining and reconstructing lost natural pasts. In addition, I am interested in botanical research and field explorations by Jewish scientists in mandatory Palestine and the early years of the state of Israel. In addition to my position at the History Department, I serve as an academic curator of the Herbarium of the National Natural History Collections. The collection includes more than 1.5 million specimens as well as a rich botanical library, botanical illustrations, and archival material. I am interested in advancing interdisciplinary approaches for collection-based research.I am currently working on two book projects. The first pursues the place of domestic plants in Victorian culture, and particularly focuses on the ways plants were perceived as individual living beings. My second project is a cultural history of coal in Victorian society, tentatively titled The Nature of Industry: Coal in 19 th -Century British Imagination. I earned my BSc from the Hebrew University (biology and “Amirim” honors’ program in the humanities) and MSc (Plant Studies). Subsequently, I completed my PhD in History of Science at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science in Tel Aviv University.