Dr Alexandra Hankinson

Dr Alexandra Hankinson
Dr Alexandra Hankinson

Dr Alexandra Hankinson

Alexandra Hankinson’s research focuses on the literary and cultural history of biological thought and phenomena from the Enlightenment to the present. Her doctoral thesis explored the cross-section between figurative and scientific thought in the botany and zoology of the long eighteenth century, with emphasis given to the way in which observation and analogy came together in this period to uncover and explain the affinities of living objects. She has published on the poetic and scientific history of insect pollination in Romanticism (2019) and is currently working on an online exhibition for the Romantic Circles Gallery of Visual Culture on hybrid and interspecific relationships. Her present research interests include the co-functioning of art and science in the discovery and description of camouflage and mimicry; histories of biodiversity and ecology in Australia; field notes; imaginative and scientific responses to avian migration; and seasonality and harvest in Romantic art and literature.

Email: alexandra.hankinson@unimelb.edu.au