In this episode, host Helene von Tabouillot speaks with the project’s Senior Research Fellow, Felicity Henderson, about the early days of the Royal Society of London. We discuss the role women played as informal sources, guests, and inquirers in the Royal Society, from which they were officially excluded until 1945. Encountering 17th-century women with particular interests ranging from salmon to shiny cliffs, we consider the possibilities of excavating these women’s voices from the male narratives in which they are embedded.
This episode contains brief discussions of miscarriage and suicidal ideation.
This episode was recorded in April 2025.
Guest: Felicity Henderson
Host: Helene von Tabouillot
Music: Leonora Duarte: Simfonia no. 7. Conducted and performed by Korneel Bernolet. Thanks to Bernolet for the kind permission to use his rendition.
Francesca Caccini: Maria dolce Maria. Performed by Capella di Santa Maria degli Angiolini. Thanks to Brilliant Classics for the kind permission to use this rendition.
Graphic design (logo): Nynne Oline B. Bennicke.
Painting (logo): Anna Maria van Schurman, self-portrait as Pudicitia (1633), used with the kind permission of Museum Martena, Franeker, The Netherlands.
This podcast is supported by the European Research Council-selected Starting Grant, ‘Cultures of Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant number EP/Y006372/1].
Suggested reading:
Henderson, Felicity, 2024. Robert Hooke’s Experimental Philosophy. Reaktion Books.
Henderson, Felicity, 2024. ‘Scientific Transactions’. In The Oxford Handbook of English Prose, 1640-1714. Oxford University Press.
Hunter, Lynette and Sarah Hutton (eds). 1997. Women, science and medicine, 1500-1700: mothers and sisters of the Royal Society. Sutton Publishing Ltd.
Schiebinger, Londa. 1989. The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science. Harvard University Press.
Tyson, Sarah. 2018. ‘From Exclusion to Reclamation’. In Where Are the Women? Why Expanding the Archive Makes the Philosophy Better. Colombia University Press.
Project Website: culturesofphilosophy.exeter.ac.uk