JC Niala
Anthropologist (History of Science and Human–Environment Relations)
I’m an anthropologist who studies how people create knowledge and how they understand and live with the natural world. Working in a museum, I explore these questions through objects and collections, using them to tell stories about science as something people actively make, debate, and change over time.
I became interested in how humans relate to the natural world because I grew up in a city that was full of nature and wildlife. As a result, I never experienced nature and culture as completely separate realms, even though they are often talked about that way. This early experience shaped my curiosity about how people draw boundaries between the natural and the social, and what those boundaries reveal about how we live.
I studied at the University of Oxford and now work there too, based at the History of Science Museum — it seems I have a hard time leaving! Being surrounded by historical scientific objects allows me to think about science not just as a body of knowledge, but as a set of practices, values, and relationships shaped by particular times and places.
Click here to listen to my podcast about milk.
Profile image credit: Ian Wallman
