A Geography of Traces
Résumé
This online talk focused on Sarah Mary Fitton, Irish born botanist (Dublin 1792-Paris 1874) and on my journey through the archives, as I try to bring to light her scientific work in an effort to disentangle the individual hurdles she faced from the systemic difficulties that were typical for women scientists in the 19th century. I discussed the position of researchers who, generations later, experience renewed injustice when facing the absence of sources. I also discussed the role of the imagination to fill in (or not) the gaps left in those stories.