Until recently, the historiography of life sciences in the long 19th century has tended to privilege the history of evolutionary theory, while neglecting other important research agendas. At the same time its narrative framework has been traditionally structured along disciplinary divisions as they emerged within the university system, implicitly privileging fundamental over applied research. The symposium will attempt to redress the balance by examining reciprocal relations between academic research - from natural history and natural philosophy to early 20th century biology- on the one hand, and pragmatic concerns of states and societies managing their natural resources on the other. More specifically, the symposium will focus on a gradual ‘scientization’ of nature management with a parallel emergence of ecology as a distinctive area of research by the end of the period. While in the last two decades the history of ecology has attracted considerable scholarly attention, the account still remains rather patchy: it concentrates on the countries of North-Western Europe and North America, or the colonies of European oceanic empires. The symposium seeks to contribute to a wider cross-national comparative study of early ecological research by examining the emergence of proto-ecological and early ecological theories and concepts in different national contexts. In particular we will seek to address the following issues:

• Relationships between the life sciences and various agencies directly engaged in nature management (governmental boards for agriculture, forestry, fisheries, local authorities, industrialists’ and landowners’ associations, cooperatives etc.) and the role of these agencies in shaping institutional infrastructures for research and its agenda;
• The changing nature of expertise in nature management, the rise of university-trained scientists as experts in this area, as well as public controversies concerning nature management and the role of scientists in their resolution;
• Changing boundaries between ‘fundamental’ and ‘applied’ research, between ‘amateur naturalists’ and ‘professional scientists’ and the role of non-university institutional environments in the advancement of proto-ecological and early ecological ideas;
• The role of material infrastructures of research (availability of high-quality laboratory equipment, accessibility of literature, museum collections) in promoting or discouraging particular research agendas;
• Distinctive national styles in early ecological theories and how they were impacted by the circulation of people and concepts across national boundaries.