Laurence, Alison

Photo of a smiling woman with light brown hair

Assistant Professor of History

Email

Preferred: alison.laurence@sjsu.edu

Education

  • Ph.D., MIT 鈥� History and Science, Technology, and Society
  • M.A., University of New Orleans 鈥� History
  • B.A., Brown University 鈥� Classics (Latin & Ancient Greek)

Bio

Dr. Alison Laurence is a cultural historian of nature, science, and society in the modern United States with particular interests in extinction, animals, and the politics of display. As an Assistant Professor of History, she teaches courses on public history, historiography, the history of science and technology, and more. She is delighted to work with the student-scholars at 91传媒厂 on public historical projects that put history to work in the wider world.  

Dr. Laurence's research, supported by the American Philosophical Society, the Huntington Library, and more, examines the lively cultural afterlives of long-gone life. Her current book project 鈥� "DINOSTALGIA" 鈥� traces how dinosaurs were made into cultural artifacts, consumer goods, and spokes-creatures for consumption. Her writing about dinosaurs, de-extinction, and dioramas (among other topics) has appeared in Animal History, Museum and Society, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

Publications

Refereed Articles

鈥�,鈥� Animal History 1, no. 3 (August 2025), 38-64.

鈥�,鈥� Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 49, no. 3-4  (June 2024), 389-409.

鈥�,鈥� Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science 77, no. 1 (Feb. 2023), 169-190.

鈥�," Museum & Society 20, no. 1 (June 2022), 71-88.

鈥湸“俦鸫诓钩Τ俨�.鈥� Science Museum Group Journal 11 (Spring 2019).

Public Scholarship & Creative Nonfiction (Selected)

鈥�,鈥� Germinate: Environmental History Review, December 17, 2025.

鈥�,鈥� The Rumpus, December 5, 2025.

鈥�,鈥� Contingent Magazine, October 22, 2025.

鈥溾�� (a review of Jurassic World: Rebirth), Los Angeles Review of Books, August 16, 2025.

鈥�,鈥� Extinct: The Philosophy of Palaeontology Blog, July 10, 2025.

鈥�,鈥� Thinking with Moss, an NEH-funded project between New York University and the New York Botanical Garden, 2024.

Book Reviews

, by Elizabeth A. Nesbitt and David B. Williams, H-Environment. (October 2024).

, by Lukas Rieppel, H-Environment Roundtable 14, no. 3 (March 13, 2024), 11-14.

, by Richard Fallon, Victorian Studies 65, no. 3 (Spring 2024), 540-542.

, by Vaughn Scribner, History: The Journal of the Historical Association 106, no. 369 (January 2021), 155-157.

, edited by Deborah Bird Rose, Thom van Dooren, and Matthew Chrulew, Journal of the History of Biology 52, no. 2 (June 2019), 361-363.

Courses

HIST 102: Historiography

HIST 197: Introduction to Public History

Links