HUMANS | A Monstrous History

This is an in-person event only. There is no live stream.

(The talk will be followed by a book sale/signing and drinks reception in our historic library, where a paid bar will be available.)

Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. In this lecture around her new book, Humans: A Monstrous History, award-winning historian of science Dr. Surekha Davies reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, identified monsters between these categories, and invented race, gender, and nations along the way. Braiding together medieval maps and Linnaeus’s system of classification, Renaissance curiosities and science-fiction cyborgs, Darwin’s Origin of Species and Frankenstein’s monster, Humans: A Monstrous History shows how monster-making lies at the foundations of the modern world – and of how people define what they mean by ‘normal.’

In an age when corporations increasingly see people as obstacles to profits, the long, volatile history of monster-making helps chart a better path for the future. This is not a history of monsters, but a history through monsters.

BIO

Dr. Surekha Davies is a British historian of science and the author of Humans: A Monstrous History (University of California Press, 2025) and the multi-award-winning Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters (Cambridge University Press). Her essays have appeared in Smithsonian, the Los Angeles Times, the Times Literary Supplement, Nature, Science, Reactor, and elsewhere. She also writes a free newsletter, Strange and Wondrous: Notes From a Science Historian.

Author photo

Credit: Anne Ryan

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Concessions

Please buy the concession ticket if you are:

• 65 years of age, or over
• Under 26 years of age
• Currently in receipt of UK government benefit (including, but not limited to, Income Based Jobseeker's Allowance, Income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and Housing Benefit, and Universal Credit).
• Currently in full-time education.

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This is an in-person event at the Linnean Society of London on Piccadilly, London, only.

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