Not Another Gentlemen's Club: The Royal Society of NSW

Not Another Gentlemen's Club: The nineteenth-century origins and significance of the Royal Society of NSW

The Royal Society of NSW is a twenty-first-century organisation with a long history in the intellectual culture of Sydney and beyond. Join historian Dr Anne Coote as she explores the history and legacy of the oldest learned society in the Southern Hemisphere.

In this talk, Anne Coote will discuss the origins of the Royal Society of NSW, its character and social position, and the significant contribution it made to the development of an active colonial research community.

About the speaker: Dr Anne Coote is a professional historian and an associate of Macquarie University’s Centre for Applied History. One of her research interests is the cultural history of science in colonial Australia. Anne has published academically on popular science journalism, the trade in natural history specimens at a local and global level, and the intersection of commercial species collecting with ideas about class. Her book, Knowledge for a Nation: Origins of the Royal Society of New South Wales, was published in 2024.