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Beautiful evening in Northern Norway at Kvitnes gård (who just got a Michelin star).

We are setting up a 200th(!) episode special for Greenhouse book talks (newnatures.org/greenhouse/) on Aug 31, 2026, at 4pm in Norway (3pm in UK / 10am Eastern). We are looking for a guest who has watched/listened to recordings regularly and/or someone who has used them for a class. Is this you?

Took a video of a hummingbird hawk-moth in Wales last week!

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In addition to being important for scientists & conservationists (which is what this position paper 👇 is about), natural history museum collections are critical for public understanding of biodiversity & why we should conserve it. My book Ghosts Behind Glass explores such collections on display.

😱 They have bedbugs in the Oslo airport. A bed in a glass case and bedbugs on display with a live video feed. Sponsored by an insurance company. Now that’s some human-animal history on display!

Thankful for this new review of Ghosts Behind Glass published in Archives of Natural History. www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.... "It is a master-class primer in natural history collections before getting into the meat of an ethnography of museum practice around displaying extinct organisms."

JØRGENSEN, Dolly. Ghosts behind glass: encountering extinction in museums | Archives of Natural Historywww.euppublishing.com

Happy to get in a medieval cathedral (St David’s) after visiting lots of castles on this trip. Since I gave my paper on medieval writer Gerald of Wales, it was nice to find his tomb here. He had wanted to be bishop of St David’s but his dreams were dashed.

The Carmathan Museum has a lovely local history collection and the interpretation includes asking questions about what has been collected, why & how it could be otherwise. Everything from standing stones carved in Ogham script to butter moulds to badgers to love spoons to switchboards.

A journey on the Gwili heritage steam train. Gotta love a good train trip! They had a postal train car museum at one stop. And a dog named Prince who had belonged to the station master at the main station.

Boat trip out to Caldey Island. The island has a medieval priory, whose land was given in 1131 by Henry I to Martin of Tiron. The 6th c Caldey Stone has an inscription in Ogham script.

National Wool Museum of Wales. I learned about teaser gigs (made from fullers’ thistles to finish the cloth and make it soft) and that the Welsh countryside woman’s costume included high hats (I only knew of such adoption of fancy hats in the countryside from the Peru Incan context).

Visit to the National Trust’s Dinefwr property. Includes a lovely house with new art pieces yet grounded in its aristocratic history, and a castle with sweeping views.

A visit to the National Botanical Gardens of Wales. Some lovely stitched art on display. Also a nature conservation fair, including swift boxes with a Welsh flag 😜

The Aberdulais tinplating works, which is a National Trust property. Located at a beautiful secluded spot that could run a waterwheel to power the works and near convenient canals for bringing in iron & tin that would be used in the process.

The University of Swansea Singleton campus (where the Battle Conference was held) is an important herring gull & lesser black-backed gull breeding site - the tall buildings are Anthropocene cliffs. And they were super noisy in the morning!

I’ve been at 49th Battle Conference this week. On Thursday morning I gave my paper ‘“For I have both read and observed myself”: Gerald of Wales’s Topography of Ireland as an eyewitness bestiary’. It compares Gerald’s writing to medieval bestiaries & looks at his emphasis on eyewitness evidence.

Super excited to announce that Ghosts Behind Glass (@uchicagopress.bsky.social) is a finalist for the 2026 Susan M Glasscock Book Prize, which honors original interdisciplinary research in the humanities that appeals to both academic and wider audiences. liberalarts.tamu.edu/glasscock/fi...

In London to serve on a Wellcome grant review panel this week. I arrived in morning so that I’d have time to see an exhibit or two. I started over at the Tate Modern for their exhibit ‘Frida: The Making of an Icon’. Excellent collection of her art and later artists using her as muse.

Extensive summer issue of @orionmagazine.bsky.social on whales. Lots of #envhist #envhum content. orionmagazine.org/issue/summer...

Summer 2026 Issue - Orion MagazineThe Deep Dive: Our History & Future With the World's Largest Mammalsorionmagazine.org