Katherine Arnold is currently under the supervision of Dr Joanna Lewis and Dr David Motadel. She holds BA degrees in History and Anthropology from the University of South Carolina and an MA in European History from UCL (with distinction). Before starting her PhD at LSE, she spent a year as a US Fulbright English Teaching Fellow in Germany. She spent the last year undertaking her fieldwork through affiliations with the University of Cape Town and Freie Universität in Berlin. She was co-convener of the HY509 International History Research Seminar in 2019/20 and co-editor of the LSE International History Blog from January 2019 to August 2020.

Provisional thesis title

Between Europe and the World: German Naturalists in the Cape Colony, 1652-1871

My project focuses on the historiographical separation between the British Empire and continental Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This hypothesis is tested through an examination of knowledge networks produced as a result of German naturalists operating in the Cape Colony under British administration (with potential for expansion into the period of Dutch rule). Ultimately, the project will demonstrate the impact these naturalists had on imperial/South African knowledge production, patterns of imperial migration, the multi-national nature of imperial structures, transnational and trans-imperial scientific networks, and on forms of hard and popular science in Europe.