Sensing the 17th Century Susannah Lyon-Whaley, Will Tullet and Lauren Working
Event details
Taste and smell your way through the 17th century in a session that will use chocolate - and an ancient additive, vanilla - to connect York to Mesoamerican orchids, Aztec life and ladies’ salons in Restoration England.
Lose yourself in the crunch of grinding beans, the smell of cocoa and the lustre of porcelain, with the chance to handle objects from an authentic cabinet of historic artefacts.
Join Susannah Lyon-Whaley, Will Tullet and Lauren Working of the University of York as they make global production and consumption in the 17th century both tangible and tactile.
About the speakers
Dr Lauren Working is a Lecturer in Renaissance Studies at the University of York. Her research focuses on literary sociability, material culture, and colonialism in the time of Shakespeare. Her book, A Golden World: How the Americas Transformed Renaissance England (Faber & Faber), is out in June 2026.
Dr Susannah Lyon-Whaley is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (UKRI-guaranteed) Fellow at the University of York. Her current research focuses on 17th-century queens and their interactions with overseas natural worlds.
Dr Will Tullet is a Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of York whose research and teaching covers three broad fields: sensory, embodied and environmental history. Will’s books include Smell in Eighteenth-Century England: A Social Sense (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Smell and the Past: Noses, Archives, Narratives (Bloomsbury, 2023).
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