Sarah M. Pickman is a Ph.D. student in Yale University’s History Department, in the Program in History of Science and Medicine. She received her B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago and an M.A. in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center of Bard College. Prior to returning to graduate school, she worked in museum administration for seven years.Sarah is interested broadly in histories of exploration, scientific expeditions, and field collecting, with a focus on the material culture of exploration. She is especially interested in aspects of gear and provisioning for exploratory expeditions. Her dissertation will examine issues of provisioning and outfitting in the context of polar exploration in the long nineteenth century, including networks of knowledge sharing between ship-based explorers and other mariners. She is also interested in the history of Arctic whaling, and interactions between whalers and indigenous peoples. Her recent chapter on polar exploration and clothing can be found in the catalogue Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme (Patricia Mears, ed.; Thames & Hudson, 2017).
