Welcome!
I am a historian of art, science and technology, and knowledge.
My research interests, in a nutshell, majorly concern plants and their visual and material culture in the early modern period. Hands-on research and performative methods, such as historical reconstruction and remaking, are instrumental for my work, which often delves into the processes of making and (re)producing images of plants.
I obtained my doctoral degree in December 2023 from Utrecht University. My PhD project investigated the forms of knowledge and the making of seventeenth-century florilegia. The research was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and received the 2020 Stacy Lloyd III Fellowship for Bibliographic Study from the Oak Spring Garden Foundation. Additionally, I have published on the woodblock making and printing of botanical woodcuts at the early modern Plantin Press. At the moment, I work partially as a researcher on the project BIO&IMAGO at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, for which I am venturing into horticultural history and historical cultivation and usage of plant materials.
In addition to being a historian, I am a maker of things with a background and training as an illustrator. See Creative Works (external site) for relevant projects.
Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen
(first name Jessie Wei-Hsuan; last name Chen)