Dr Isabel Davis

Isabel Davis is the Research Theme Leader in Collections and Culture, bringing arts and humanities perspectives to the Natural History Museum's world-class specimen and library and archive collections. She also holds honorary research fellowships at the University of Reading and Birkbeck, University of London.

She took her degrees in English and Related Literatures and then Medieval Studies at the University of York and worked for a long time in universities, spending most of her career at Birkbeck, University of London, before ending up as a researcher at the Natural History Museum. Her research into conception and fertility moved her into cross-period health and environmental humanities. Isabel has had a long-term collaboration with artist and illustrator, Anna Burel, which has developed her interest in creative forms of public engagement. Anna and Isabel's book, Conceiving Histories, came runner up in the Adult Factual Category in the V&A Illustration Awards 2026; Anna contributed 108 arresting colour illustrations, which are woven into the book's research and ideas, For a complete list of Isabel's publications, follow the link to her Orcid profile.

Her recent research has been funded by an AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship, (Mis)Conceptions: A Cultural History of Pregnancy Ambiguity (Sept 2023 to March 2025). Her research interests are in historical health humanities - especially fertility, conception and embryology, human and non-human animal studies, and environmental history.

She supports researchers from all arts and humanities backgrounds to research the Natural History Museum's collections and thematic areas.

She is open to supervising new doctoral students in arts and humanities disciplines, based at UK Higher Education Institutions and with subject expertise from a relevant HEI supervisor, to work on Natural History Museum collections.