Stanford Humanities Center
Anna Toledano is a PhD candidate at Stanford studying history of science. Her academic research focuses on natural history collecting in eighteenth-century Spain and Spanish America. Toledano is also a museum professional and has developed interpretive content at a variety of museum institutions. She holds an MA in museum anthropology from Columbia University and an AB in history of science from Princeton University.
SHC Project
Collecting Independence: The Science and Politics of Natural History Museums in New Spain, 1770–1820
Toledano's dissertation interrogates why certain plants, animals, and minerals made the journey to Spain from Spanish America—and why most did not—to develop a new, material interpretation of natural history collecting in the late Spanish Empire. Her use of diverse textual and object sources from Mexican, Guatemalan, Spanish, and Californian collections weaves together a holistic story of the history of science in the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
