Individual Scholar Page

Personal Info

Photo

About Me

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the Wellcome Trust-funded project ‘Conserving Global Health: Biodiversity Protection and the Prehistory of Planetary Health’ at the University of Liverpool.

I am a historian of the German, British, and Dutch empires, the history of science and the environment, and global history in the long nineteenth century. I am primarily interested in subjects related to natural history collecting and collections; non-human and multispecies histories; museums; botany and botanic gardens; taxonomy; and biodiversity loss and climate change, particularly in the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa.

I hold BA degrees in History and Anthropology from the University of South Carolina and an MA in European History from UCL. I earned a PhD in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2021) and have held teaching positions at the LSE (2021-22) and the University of Liverpool (2022-23), and worked as Director of Academic Programs at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at LMU München (2023-24).

I have previously held research posts and fellowships at the University of Cape Town (2018), Freie Universität Berlin (2019), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2024), and Cambridge University Herbarium and Botanic Garden (2026). I have also received prestigious awards from funding bodies such as the LSE, the German History Society, the Royal Society, the Royal Historical Society, and DAAD. My PhD dissertation received Honorable Mention in both the German Historical Institute London Dissertation Prize (2022) and the 7th Dissertation Prize for the Division for the History of Science and Technology (DHST) in the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IUHPST) (2023), and one of its chapters was awarded the German History Society Essay Prize (2021). My teaching practice has also been recognized: I was awarded the LSE Class Teacher Award (2022) and received several nominations for the LSE Student Union Teaching Awards (2022) for inclusive education and inspirational teaching.

Katherine is currently transforming her PhD research into a monograph entitled Economies of Nature: German Expertise and Natural History Collecting in Southern Africa.

Recent Publications

—        “H-Environment Roundtable Reviews. Patrick Anthony, Unearthed: Science and Environment Across Mineral Frontiers (University of Chicago Press, 2026),” H-Environment – forthcoming

—        “Book Review: Matthew P. Fitzpatrick, A Pacific Power: Liberal Imperialism in German Samoa (Oxford University Press, 2025),” German History – forthcoming.

2026    with Martha Fleming, “Climate Change and Collection Ecologies: Biodiversity Lost and Found,” in A Historian’s Handbook for Saving the World: Responding to the Climate Change Emergency, eds. Alexandra Hui and Emily Pawley (The MIT Press, 2026)

2026    with Ella D. Müller, “Trading the Globe’s Flora from the German Provinces: The Unio Itineraria in Esslingen, 1827-1842,” Itinerario, (forthcoming October 2026)

2026    “‘What a Strange Prodigy’”: The Welwitschia mirabilis,” in Images of the Plant Humanities: Theory, Art and the Botanic Gaze, eds. Danielle Sands and Daniel Whistler (Bloomsbury, 2026), 15-26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350502642.ch-001

2026    “Understanding Plant Parasitism: Hydnora africana and European Scientific Practice in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte (2026): e70032. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.70032

Special issue: “Lab, Field, and Companion Species: Tracing Nonhuman Histories in Times of Imperial Expansion” edited by Sabine Hancke and Anne Sophie Overkamp

2026    “The Welwitsch Study Set: A Collection Ecology,” Endeavour 50, nos. 1-2 (2026): 101050. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.endeavour.2026.101050

Special issue: “Collection Ecologies” edited by Dominik Hünniger and Anita Guerrini

2024    “Book Review: Matthew P. Fitzpatrick, The Kaiser and the Colonies: Monarchy in the Age of Empire (Oxford University Press, 2022),” Cultural and Social History 21, no. 1 (2024): 133-35. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2023.2293545

2023    “Book Review: Holger Droessler, Coconut Colonialism: Workers and the Globalization of Samoa (Harvard University Press, 2022),” Central European History 56, no. 4 (2023): 638-40. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008938923000924

2023    “Book Review: Lachlan Fleetwood, Science on the Roof of the World: Empire and the Remaking of the Himalaya (Cambridge University Press, 2022),” British Journal for the History of Science 56, no. 4 (2023): 582-83. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S000708742300064X

2023    “Book Review: Klemens Wedekind, Impfe und herrsche. Veterinärmedizinisches Wissen und Herrschaft im kolonialen Namibia 1887-1929 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021),” German History 41, no. 4 (2023): 620-22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghad052

2022    “Fashioning an Imperial Metropolis at the 1896 Berliner Gewerbeausstellung,” The Historical Journal 65, no. 3 (2022): 685-706. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X21000467

2016    with Dominic Alessio and Patricia Ollé-Tejero, “Spain, Germany and the United States in the Marshall Islands: Re-imagining the Imperial in the Pacific,” Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies 4 (2016): 115-36. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/nzps.4.2.115_1

Media Coverage

Social Media

@karnold01

Country Focus

Germany, United Kingdom, South Africa, Namibia

Expertise by Geography

Africa, Germany, United Kingdom, Western Europe

Expertise by Chronology

18th century, 19th century, Modern, 20th century

Expertise by Topic

Colonialism, Diplomacy, Environment, Indigenous Peoples, Libraries & Archives, Material Culture, Migration & Immigration, Museums, Public History, Race, Science, Urban History