Sarah Pickman is an independent historian whose work focuses on the intersections of exploration and field science, material culture, and extreme environments during the long nineteenth century, particularly in polar and high-altitude regions. She is currently co-editor-in-chief of Endeavour, a journal of the history and philosophy of science. Her writing has appeared in venues such as Material Intelligence, NiCHE, Isis, and Alpinist magazine, as well as numerous edited scholarly volumes. She has also curated exhibitions and installations at the Yale School of Medicine and Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum, and serves on the organizing committee for Terror Camp, an interdisciplinary polar humanities and science conference.

Dr. Pickman earned her MA at the Bard Graduate Center and her PhD from the Department of History-Program in History of Science and Medicine at Yale University. Her dissertation examined how British and American explorers used objects of daily life to recreate familiar emotional and sensorial experiences while in the field, reshaping Anglophone notions of “comfort” in the process, and her work was awarded Yale University’s Hans Gatzke Prize. During her time as a visiting fellow, she will work on developing her dissertation into a book manuscript.