ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

African Women and Invisibility in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Expeditions: Queens, Guardians and Local Knowledge Holders

• In Event: Scientific Expeditions and the Co-Production of Knowledge

English Abstract

During the nineteenth century, the height of European scientific expeditions across African territories consolidated a colonial narrative of knowledge production, often centred on male European explorers and naturalists. Yet, behind these expeditions were numerous African women — queens, guides, interpreters, healers, and local knowledge holders - whose contributions were systematically erased from the historiography of science. This presentation reconstructs fragments of these women’s presence and agency through travel journals, correspondence, drawings, and publications, analysing how they mediated the encounter between local epistemologies and Western science. It argues that these figures were fundamental to the collection, classification, and translation of knowledge, acting as invisible co-authors of a global scientific enterprise. By reintroducing these agents into the narrative, the study proposes a decolonial rereading of the nineteenth-century history of science, emphasising the role of orality, empirical experience, and female knowledge networks in shaping what came to be known as “modern science”. With this perspective, we analyse the invisible women in the expeditions of F. Welwitch, Capelo & Ivens, and H. Carvalho. The work is funded by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P., in the framework of the UID/04209/2025 e LA/P/0132/2020 (doi.org/10.54499/LA/P/0132/2020) and KNOW.AFRICA (ref. 2022.01599.PTDC) | https://doi.org/10.54499/2022.01599.PTDC.

Author

• Sara Manuela de Albuquerque, University of Évora | IHC