"What I did on my summer vacation" by Erick Peirson, NSF Graduate Research Fellow

Just as for many of the ecologists whose research I study, summer has become my "field season": a chance to visit archives and conduct interviews at various sites around Europe and the UK (and a good excuse to escape the summer heat of the Sonoran desert). 

     This summer, my primary objective has been to collect data about the material, intellectual, and economic context in which a particular group of British grassland ecologists -- "genecologists," as they called themselves -- conducted their research in the decades after WWII. In particular, I've been focusing on ecologist Tony Bradshaw (1926-2008), whose ideas about the evolutionary significance of adaptive phenotypic plasticity continue to influence contemporary evolutionary biologists. This meant visiting a variety of archives -- in Aberystwyth, Bangor, Edinburgh, and Liverpool -- and interviewing many of Bradshaw's early students, collaborators, and friends all over the UK and Europe. Both archives and oral histories provide valuable and unique insights into the events, contexts, exchanges, and challenges that shape scientific research. (Thanks to a grant from the Graduate and Professional Students Association at ASU, all of these interviews are professionally transcribed; both audio recordings and transcriptions will soon be made publically available through the Digital HPS Community Repository [http://hpsrepository.asu.edu/].)

     One of the unexpected products of this trip was finding a whole lot of information about the first few meetings of the "Ecological Genetics Group," which is now a Special Interest Group of the British Ecological Society (sometimes called the "Easter EGG," since it usually meets in mid-April). These meetings started in 1956 as an informal gathering of staff from the Scottish and Welsh Plant Breeding Stations. Not only did the group share an interest in developing marginal pasturelands using knowledge about the relationship between genetic variation and environmental factors, but they were also close friends. 

     So during the last week of my trip I whipped together a poster about the history of the EGG, using data that I gathered from archives and interviews this summer, and took it to INTECOL 2013 [http://www.intecol2013.org]  -- a joint meeting of the International Association for Ecology and the British Ecological Society -- in London. Especially since this was the 100th anniversary of the BES, it was a fun opportunity to talk about the history of ecological and evolutionary research with practicing scientists. One of the most prevalent themes of the conference was applying ecological knowledge to agricultural problems, and it was exciting to see both the continuities and transformations between contemporary and historical ecological research and thinking. 

     I found that both junior and senior ecologists at INTECOL were excited to learn about the history of ecology, and to reflect on the contexts and contingencies of their own work. But oddly, out of 2,500+ attendees, so far as I could tell I was one of only two historians in attendance (and the only one on the program)! Clearly there is great potential for historians and philosophers of science to build relationships with the ecology community.

     This trip was made possible by generous grants from:

          Center for Biology & Society

          Professor Manfred Laubichler

          ASU Graduate and Professional Students Association

          National Science Foundation (Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. 2011131209, and NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant No. 1256752.)