Maura Burke
Maura Cassidy Burke is a PhD Candidate in the Freudenthal Institute of Utrecht University where she studies the philosophy of science and the foundations of open science. As the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Trial and Error and an Executive at the Center of Trial and Error, Maura has long been passionate about the communication of academic information. She looks forward to helping the editors and authors continue to grow and develop Shells and Pebbles in the coming years.
Luca Forgiarini
Luca Forgiarini is a PhD Candidate in the history and philosophy of science at Utrecht University. His research focusses on the history of international scientific cooperation in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. He is particularly interested in how scientific organisations like CERN and ESA relate to the political context of European integration, and the wider pro-European sentiment of the time. As an editor of Shells and Pebbles, Luca is excited to help foster a lively platform for the history of science and the humanities community both at home and abroad.
Marieke Gelderblom
Marieke Gelderblom is working on a PhD in the history of statistical graphics at the Freudenthal Institute at Utrecht University. She is investigating why graphics were so widely embraced and how they became so deeply embedded in nineteenth-century Dutch society. Prior to her PhD, Marieke studied History and Philosophy of Science at Utrecht University, with a specialisation in Science Communication at Leiden University. Her background is in Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics. By combining these fields, she hopes to find out why numbers and mathematical structures are so helpful for understanding our world. She enjoys thinking, talking and teaching about the history of science and sees Shells and Pebbles as a platform to collect and share these fascinating stories.
Elian Schure
Elian Schure is a PhD candidate specializing in the history and philosophy of the life sciences at Utrecht University. She works on the conceptualization of race/ ethnicity in microbiome research in South Africa. Her main focus in this project is on the role that race plays in biological research, and how scientists can communicate about race/ethnicity in a productive way that does not rely on stereotypes. As an editor of Shells and Pebbles, she hopes to be able to contribute to the publication of many interesting topics in the history of the life sciences.
David Skogerboe
David Skogerboe is a PhD Candidate at Utrecht University who specializes in the history of the twentieth-century ‘Space Age’ in its cultural and social contexts. As a researcher within the Freudenthal Institute, David focuses on the intersection of space history and science communication as it relates to imagining the future, and the impact such imaginings have on the development, implementation, and utilization of sociotechnical space technologies. He is eager to help ensure Shells and Pebbles serves as a mechanism for growing and uniting the history of science and humanities community.
Lisa Vanderheyden
As a PhD Candidate, Lisa Vanderheyden partakes in provenance research about an anatomical and cultural historical collection of foetuses originating from the museum Vrolik in Amsterdam. There is little known about the origin of the collected foetuses (how they came to be in the collection and via which channels they were collected). These material sources, originating from the nineteenth and early twentieth century, are the starting point of her research, which aims to create a broad picture of the way these practices were perceived in the Dutch society and medical market of that time. Lisa is excited to be on the editing staff of Shells and Pebbles, and to make the history of medicine an integral part of the history of science community.
Elske de Waal
Elske de Waal is a PhD Candidate in history and philosophy of science at Utrecht University. Her project explores the history of science and mathematics education research at the Freudenthal Institute. Taking inspiration from the history of science, history of education, and history of knowledge, she investigates the relationship between academia, educational practice, and public knowledge. She also has an interest in the interconnections between the politics, policy, and science of weather prediction in nineteenth-century Britain. In the role of editor of Shells and Pebbles she hopes to provide a space where historians can nurse such special interests by reading and writing about them.