Dr. Sarah Pickman is an early career historian with an interest in scientific and exploratory expeditions, particularly in the long nineteenth century and in the polar regions, with a special focus on the outfitting and funding of expeditions and equipment developed for mobile science. She recently completed her Ph.D. from the Program in History of Science and Medicine at Yale University, where her dissertation, “The Right Stuff: Material Culture, Comfort, and the Making of Explorers, 1820-1940,” was awarded the Hans Gatzke Prize from the Yale Department of History. Prior to her Ph.D. studies, she received a B.A. from the University of Chicago in Anthropology, with a minor in Art History, and an M.A. in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center at Bard College.
Dr. Pickman’s work has appeared in a number of academic and public-facing venues, including the scholarly journal Isis, Alpinist magazine, and podcasts such as Time to Eat the Dogs and Highlander. She has a chapter on polar explorers’ clothing in the exhibition catalogue Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme (Thames & Hudson, 2017), and a number of chapters in forthcoming edited volumes, on topics ranging from the material culture of Antarctic expeditions to the history of applied science education in the United States. She can be found online at www.sarahmpickman.com.
