Lars Dickmann (Doctoral Research Fellow) - March 2026

For his doctoral thesis on the history of biological pest control, Lars Dickmann is examining the correspondence networks of Basel-based entomologist, Eduard Handschin (1894–1962). Handschin's entire correspondence from the Natural History Museum archive has been digitised and processed using optical character recognition in preparation for a network analysis. This analysis aims to demonstrate how, between 1930 and 1950, museum and applied entomologists established biological pest control as an alternative to chemical insect control methods such as DDT.