PhD Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 2024
MA Georg-August Universität Göttingen, 2016
AB Universidade de São Paulo, 2014

Postdoctoral researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Brazil, 2024

Currently a postdoctoral fellow researching Antarctica, with a focus on the Brazilian scientific research in this continent.

My PhD research was oriented to the history of the collections of the museums of natural history and the Earth sciences. The collaboration between different regions of the world, each one with a particular access to the local evidence of the planet’s history, allows the articulation of the local and global scales, a theme of particular interest in respect to the history of scientific cooperation. Therefore, these exchanges represent the material footprint of how the theories are “thought” from objects and itineraries that are conditioned by the communication and the transportation of data and artefacts. The scientific exchanges of these objects and its contextualization also carry information on the relations between the actors and the interests involved.

My dissertation was about the exchanges conducted during the end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th century, between different museums and southern hemisphere geologists/palaeontologists interested in proving the ancient existence of the southern Pan-continent Gondwana. The focus was on the circulation of the fossil specimens of the botanical genus Glossopteris. This was found in Paleozoic strata of all the southern hemisphere continents and India and was one of the main pieces of evidence for the ancient connection of these continents. The research showed the shifting of meanings linked to this fossil type in time, from its description, associated with the search of coal in India and the southern continents, its significance for the concept of Gondwana, following up to its importance as proof of the continental drift theory in the first half of the 20^th century. The focus was on Argentina, Brazil and South Africa.

Waligora, M. F. (2024). The South Does Also Exist: The Continental Drift Debate in the Account of the South-African Paleobotanist Edna Plumstead. Earth Sciences History, 43(1): 153-175.

Waligora M. F. (2020). Researchers following the Glossopteris trail: social context of the debate surrounding the continental drift theory in Argentina in the early 20^th century. Colligo, 3(3). http://revue-colligo.fr/index.php/vol-3-num-3/2-uncategorised/45-203305

Waligora, M. F. & Peyerl, D. (2020). Geólogos estado-unidenses no Brasil: A atuação da Comissão White (1904-1906) e da Expedição Woodworth (1908-1909) no desenvolvimento da ciência geológica e paleontológica brasileira. 17º Seminário Nacional de História da Ciência e da Tecnologia (17º SNHCT). https://www.17snhct.sbhc.org.br/site/capa

Blog post:

SciCoMove: Provincial Museums, Archives, and Collecting Practices (1850–1950)

18/07/2022 – “The classification of Glossopteris and the study of coal” – https://scicomove.hypotheses.org/1680