Isabel Davis

Dear BlueSky, Please widely share that my book is out today. 🚀 It tells wild & wonderful, (& arrestingly illustrated) little-known histories from the reproductive frontline. It is a history like no other and like any other, ie brill & for any history lover anywhere. Discount code in replies 👇🏾

Congratulations to Anna Burel for being selected as the Adult Factual Runner-Up at this year’s V&A Illustration Awards for her work on “Conceiving Histories” by @drbeldavis.bsky.social! 🏆

#BBKArtsWeek: this is the best time in the year, when we open our doors to share projects, ideas, dreams: Centre for Nineeteenth-Century Studies William #Morris & #Utopia Michael Robertson 5 May, 6pm, Birkbeck Clore, Torrington Square. Details & free booking here: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...

Looking forward to Morris and Utopia #BBKArtsWeek Join us on 5 May at 6pm Birkbeck, Clore Auditorium, 27 Torrington Sq., London Book your free place here: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event... @drvickymills.bsky.social

Tuesday 5 th May 6pm- ‘William Morris and Utopia’- Birkbeck Arts Week 2026. The Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth- Century Studies presents Morris expert Prof. Michael Robertson who will discuss the utopian dimensions of Morris’ life and work. Book your place here: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...

How do natural history #museums help save the world? Next Thursday @drbeldavis.bsky.social & I will explore how collections help tackle biodiversity loss & climate change today, as well as historical legacies behind these museums. Part of Birkbeck's Climate Festival: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...

🎉 "Conceiving Histories" has been shortlisted for the V&A Illustration Awards! Please join us in congratulating author @drbeldavis.bsky.social and illustrator Anna Burel on this honor: www.vam.ac.uk/info/va-illu... Learn more about their beautiful book here: mitpress.mit.edu/978026204948...

Thrilled that Anna Burel's illustrations in my @mitpress.bsky.social book 'Conceiving Histories' are shortlisted for the @vamuseum.bsky.social Illustration Awards 2026 in the Adult Factual category. Adults like pictures too!

Patrick Morgan on Contesting Earth's History in the Review of English Studies: 'beautifully detailed, intricately researched, and compelling'. What more could you wish for? The review, for those with access: academic.oup.com/res/advance-...

#caturday afternoon read in bed of “Conceiving Histories” with Annie. Congratulations to @drbeldavis.bsky.social and Anna Burel on their inventive and intriguing collaboration! @mitpress.bsky.social #booksky #histmed #blackcat

jobs.royalholloway.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

For one strange year in the 18th century, flaunting a false pregnancy was all the rage. (An excerpt from @drbeldavis.bsky.social's book "Conceiving Histories")

Everybody medievally inclined in cent. London - Friday is a great day. Check out the Birkbeck Medieval Seminar. Followed by: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event... Followed by the Matthews Lecture on the Medieval & Modern Fertility industry Free, but book. See you there! #medievalresearchseminars

Look what came in the post for me 2 beautiful books by @jackashby.bsky.social and @taoleighgoffe.bsky.social Looking forward to reading both.

At @nhm-london.bsky.social Collections and Culture we've become a bit obsessed with finding historical 'named animals'. Here's Maurice Wilson's 1955 painting of Rota the lion, who lived at @zslofficial.bsky.social's London Zoo 1940–1955. © the copyright holder. Credit: Zoological Society of London.

I enjoyed collaborating with the Big Fat Negative newsletter, writing a guest post on the consolations of history. The image is one of Anna Burel's collages for our book Conceiving Histories @mitpress.bsky.social #consolationsofhistory open.substack.com/pub/bigfatne...

Day 2 of #NatSCA2025 @natsca.bsky.social is up and running! I’m speaking later on behalf of @curioustravellers.bsky.social and the @nhm-london.bsky.social Thomas Pennant Collections #HistoryOfNaturalHistory #NaturalHistoryMuseums

I think this is the coolest thing I've ever discovered... www.isabeldavis.co.uk/resources/ar... #TudorPortraits

I enjoyed making this resource, which shows the relationship between the famous Armada portrait of Elizabeth I and a sea chart or portolan map. www.isabeldavis.co.uk/resources/ar... #TudorHistory

Looking forward to giving the William Matthews Lecture on 30th May 6-7.30pm at Birkbeck, University of London, Torrington Square WC1E 7JL. I'm talking to the title: In Vitro: The Fertility Industry Medieval and Modern. Come! Tickets are free but you need to book: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...

I really enjoyed talking to Kyle Kellems at KUAF radio when I visited Fayetteville AR. Radio is such a cool medium. I grew up with it and still really like it. You can catch my interview with him here: www.kuaf.com

And a shout out to @drbeldavis.bsky.social whose book Conceiving Histories was the topic of the review and which sounds amazing.

Thank you Nora! Glad it inadvertently captures your family story.

Yes! And I emailed your mother because I really enjoyed reading Edward Elkan's memoir in the @wellcomecollection.bsky.social and writing about it in my book 'Conceiving Histories' (the subject of the @lrb.co.uk review). We waved at each other from each side of the 'pond'.

My letter to the @lrb.co.uk following a full and positive review of my book 'Conceiving Histories' in the last issue. I don't think people were calmer about uncertainty in the past, rather they were better able to acknowledge it. #HistMed

Turns out my article on 'Imaginary Megalosaurs in Nineteenth-Century Literature', part of a starry special issue on the bicentenary of the naming of this 'first' dinosaur, came out last week in Earth Sciences History: doi.org/10.17704/194...

Daily reminder.

Thanks Karl! My book is good and freq funny too. & - bonus - I discuss men's history as well as women's.

"The dreamy, associative nature of the book sinks the reader into the uncertain and indeterminate state of trying to conceive, of early pregnancy, of miscarriage." @lrb.co.uk reviews "Conceiving Histories" by @drbeldavis.bsky.social:

"For every fairy tale that deals with the child’s question about where babies come from, another teaches us that the quest for knowledge entails loss." @lrb.co.uk reviews "Conceiving Histories," @drbeldavis.bsky.social's elegant history of fertility and infertility:

‘A woman “should turn her eyes towards heaven”, Lodovico Domenichi wrote in 1549, not towards the earth “as beasts do”. If her orgasm was required for conception, she ought to be looking at God when she came.’ @erinmaglaque.bsky.social on the history of conception: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

On the podcast: @erinmaglaque.bsky.social joins @moonjets.bsky.social to discuss how the understanding of conception has changed since the early modern period, what knowledge has been gained but also what may have been lost. Listen wherever you get podcasts, or here: www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and...

@drbeldavis.bsky.social, the author of "Conceiving Histories," joined BBC Woman's Hour to share fascinating stories about the history of conception. She talks using frogs for pregnancy tests, phantom pregnancies, & the brief fashion for looking pregnant even if you weren’t. Segment begins at 46:45:

Very pleased to receive this warm review of 'Conceiving Histories' in the @lrb.co.uk from @erinmaglaque.bsky.social I tried to do something different (free time-travel in both text and image). It was hard to know how it might land. To my relief the book's first readers are making sense of it.

Thank you for this thoughtful review of 'Conceiving Histories', its frogs and bubbles and disregard for plot.

‘There aren’t any frogs involved in making a baby now. But there isn’t much mystery either, or much room to express doubt, and it’s not clear that this certainty has been an unequivocal gift.’ @erinmaglaque.bsky.social on the history of pregnancy and conception: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I went to talk to BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour yesterday morning to talk about my @mitpress.bsky.social book 'Conceiving Histories: Trying for Pregnancy, Past and Present'. Catch it on iPlayer. #nonfictionreads

Conceiving Histories - our NHM colleague @drbeldavis.bsky.social discusses the ambiguities of pregancy over time on Woman's Hour BBCRadio4 from 44:46 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

The book Conceiving Histories by @drbeldavis.bsky.social is now published by MIT press mitpress.mit.edu/978026204948...

One of the histories in @drbeldavis.bsky.social book is the use of the African Clawed Toad in the mid-20th Century as a way of detecting human pregnancy, featured in the new @nhm-london.bsky.social exhibition Fixing Our Broken Planet Listen to the gallery guide soundcloud.com/nhmlondon/st...

Feel very proud to be featured in NHM's new gallery beneath this frog specimen. In my @mitpress.bsky.social book Conceiving Histories, I write about the logistics of the toad trade from South Africa across the early apartheid period, many amongst other things. #HistMed.

The official publication date, according to @oxfordunipress.bsky.social, who (after all) should know, has been updated. It's ... today!

We're not just 🐋 and 🦕 at the Natural History Museum. Looking forward to this Generation Hope event @ NHM on reproductive health & colonial history with an environmental lens. 3rd May. Speakers: me, Akosua Paries-Osei, Annabel Sowemimo, & Mitzi Jonelle Tan. www.nhm.ac.uk/events/from-... #HistMed

A great review of 'Conceiving Histories' from author a psychotherapist, Julia Bueno. Particularly pleased with: 'She writes with an extraordinary depth of scholarship that sits lightly on the page'. #HistMed www.juliabueno.co.uk/blog/

Was so pleased with this review of a recent exhibition from my AHRC-funded project (Mis)Conceptions in BioNews from the Progress Education Trust. www.progress.org.uk/exhibition-r...