Laura Clerx
Visiting Assistant Professor
Laura Clerx
Ph.D.
Contact
Stokes Hall South 348
Email: laura.clerx@bc.edu
Education
- Ph.D., 糖心Vlog
- A.B., Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
Courses
Global Environmental History I, Asia in the World, Modern Atlantic Worlds, World of Early Modern Europe, Globalization, Europe in the World II
Research Interests
Early American Republic; nineteenth-century United States; history of science (scientific knowledge and practice); social structure of science and learned societies in the early national U.S.; material culture and political economy; economic history; environmental history
Advisor
Department
Current Research
Laura Clerx's current research project, 鈥淣ature鈥檚 Properties: Science and Commerce in Early America, 1780-1850,鈥� explores the connections between scientific inquiry and commercial enterprise in the early United States. Her project follows scientific society members and their involvement in economic projects from the late eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth century; and argues that understanding these efforts to create a national economy is indispensable to understanding the nature of early American science.
Her research has been supported by the George Washington Presidential Library, the American Philosophical Society, the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Rehoboth Antiquarian Society.
She currently serves as senior editorial assistant for the Journal of the Early Republic.
Podcasts and Public History
鈥淓pisode 19: Science and Commerce in Early America with Laura Clerx,鈥� Historians and theirHistories: MHS Podcast, Massachusetts Historical Society, October 6, 2025.
鈥淭he Common Reed, Phragmites australis鈥�; 鈥淭ileston & Hollingsworth Dam鈥�; and 鈥淚srael Stoughton Grist Mill鈥� entries in Mapping the Neponset. A digital walking tour of the history of the Neponset River in South Boston, MA. . Published December 2024.
Publications
Clerx, Laura. 鈥淪alt Finding and Geology in the Age of Revolutions,鈥� Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (forthcoming; invited contribution for special issue on 鈥淪cience & Society in the Age of Revolutions,鈥� Adrianna Link, Brenna Holland, and Vincent Femia, eds.).
Book Review: Clerx, Laura. 鈥淢aking an Industrial Revolution: Skill, Knowledge, Community and Innovation. By Gillian Cookson. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2025. 264 pp. + 14 b/1 illus., 1 map. Hardcover, 拢95.00. ISBN: 978-1-83765-222-8.鈥� Business History Review 99 (Winter 2025), 680-682.
Clerx, Laura Elizabeth. "A Return to our Roots: Countering Epidemic Disease with Plant-Derived Medicine" in聽The History of Contagion in Harvard Library's Collections.听Harvard Library Bulletin聽2021.听.听
Clerx, L.E., F.E. Rockwell, J.A., Savage, J.A., and N.M. Holbrook. 2020. Ontogenetic scaling of phloem sieve tube anatomy and hydraulic resistance with tree height in Quercus rubra. American Journal of Botany 107(6): 852-863.
Savage, J.A., S.D. Beecher, L. Clerx, J.T. Gersony, J. Knoblauch, J.M. Losada, K.H. Jensen, M. Knoblauch, and N.M Holbrook. 2017. Maintenance of carbohydrate transport in tall trees. Nature Plants 3: 965-972.