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Eleanor Stephenson dissects the life of John Vaughan, 3rd Earl of Carbery, President of the Royal Society from 1686 to 1689 and a man described by his enemies as 'half way to hell’ and ‘as ugly in face as in fame’.

Dr Carolyn Roberts of Yale University, currently writing her first book 'To heal and to harm: medicine, knowledge, and power in the British slave trade', discusses some key documents in the Royal Society's archives.

Frankie Chappell discovers how the production and economic importance of sugar made it a frequent topic of discussion in letters to the Royal Society.

Frankie Chappell finds examples in the Royal Society's archives showing how scientific research into poisons supported colonial projects of exploration and expansion, and how the necessary role of indigenous peoples was obscured.

Ellen Embleton considers how the Royal Society Picture Library can highlight the contributions of enslaved and indigenous peoples to fields such as entomology and botany.

We hear from a PhD student at New York University about her project ‘Smallpox and Slavery: Morbidity, Medical Intervention, and Enslaved People's Lives in the Greater Caribbean’.

Frankie Chappell presents our new Black History Month exhibit on Google Arts & Culture, highlighting stories from the Royal Society’s collections which feature the role of people of African and African-Caribbean descent in the history of science.

In the first of a series of articles to celebrate Black History Month, Keith Moore reviews how the archives of the Royal Society might acknowledge science’s historical links to networks of suffering, and credit Black authority in scientific knowledge.

Rupert Baker hears the story of statistician Zachary Macaulay FRS and his role in the abolition of the slave trade.