Dr. Naomi Yuval-Naeh

10 May, 2023
Dr. Naomi Yuval-Naeh

Historical curator of the plant collection, faculty member in the Department of History in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

One of my projects seeks to examine the relationship to nature in industrial society by focusing on the fuel that drove the industrial revolution - coal. I wish to examine how a material that was, and still is, the perfect antithesis to "natural" ideals, the banner of progress and technology, is perceived as deeply involved in the natural world.

In addition to my work in British history, within the framework of the national nature collections I am involved in the history of the study of nature in the Land of Israel, and especially in the beginning of botanical research during the Mandate period and in the first decades of the State of Israel.

I am a historian dealing with environmental history and the history of science in the late modern era. The main part of my research examines the knowledge of nature (Natural History) and the practices related to it, as a broad cultural field. Within these contexts, I investigate the human interest in nature and the ways in which modern societies have integrated it into their culture, and in particular how nature is perceived, nurtured, and consumed in modern industrial society.