Dr. Catarina Madruga

Catarina.Madruga@mfn.berlin
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Area:
Dynamics of Nature
Department:
Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery

In 2026, I am a Visiting Scientist working together with Dr. Ulrich Struck on interdisciplinary methods for provenance research, in the context of the international project "Ein Geschenck von Senghor", funded by the Marc Bloch Zentrum - Provenienzforschungsfonds. From Dec. 2020 to Dec. 2024, I worked as a researcher at the Centre for the Humanities of Nature in provenance research projects led by Dr. Ina Heumann and funded by the Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste, documenting colonial context collections in the MfN. 

Vita

Catarina Madruga is a scholar of science and collection history specializing in European natural history museums and their portrayal of the displaced biodiversity of colonized African territories. She earned her Ph.D. in 2020 from the University of Lisbon (UL) in Portugal with a dissertation titled “Taxonomy and Empire: Zoogeographical Knowledge on Portuguese Africa, 1862–1881.” 
Her previous work includes roles as a curator of historical collections, exhibition designer, museum educator, and teaching assistant at the Faculty of Science at UL, as well as provenance researcher at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. During her doctoral studies, she was a visiting student at EHESS in Paris and at HPS in Cambridge and received a fellowship at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig. Together with Dr. Déborah Dubald (University of Strasbourg), she is co-editor of the special issue of the Journal for the History of Knowledge on “Situated Nature,” which was published in 2022. She is a co-founder of the international and interdisciplinary research collective “Collections Ecologies”: collecte.hypotheses.org.

Publications

Madruga, C. (2023). Anchieta, José Alberto de Oliveira. In Dicionário Biográfico de Cientistas, Engenheiros e Médicos em Portugal. CIUHCT. DOI: https://doi.org/10.58277/EQQX9417Open Access

Madruga, C. (2023). Mobile Museums Collections in Circulation , by Felix Driver, Mark Nesbitt, and Caroline Cornish, eds.. Nuncius, 38(3), 744-746. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/18253911-bja10076

Madruga, C., Madruga, C. (2024). Cameroon in Berlin. (202). Museum für Naturkunde Berlin - Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science. URL: https://www.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/sites/default/files/Cameroon%20in%20Berlin%202024_1.pdfOpen Access

Hoffmann, J., Schuster, F., Berger, F., Glöckler, F., Petersen, M., Tata, N., Herrmann, E., Hoffmann, A., Quaisser, C., Rietschel, S., Korun, M., Mützel, C., Kaiser, K., Hermannstädter, A., Kilbourne, B., Madruga, C., Strohmann, V., Abd el Gawad, H.H., Adejuwon, A.M., Antonites, A., Arfvidsson, H., Asino, W.N., Coly, P.A., Coulson, I., Dao, S.C., Dau, J., Endter, S., Funke, B., Gallé, L., Gawkowski, J.J., Hassan, N., Henning, P., Huber, A.K., Inyangete, E.M., Iyumva, M.R., Kalumne, A.S., Kapalamula, M., Karim, E.I.A., Karro, P., Kesler, M.C., Keurmeur, N.L.M.D., Khaled Morsi, N., Kuatche Fowo, B.C., Muchefa, L., Lovegrove Pereira, S., Lowe, M.C., Makongo Nsobley, Y.J., Moustafa Ahmed, N., Nafula, L.R., Ngenzi, V., Ngoma, K.T., Nobah, S., Owusu, P., Oyeniran, T.A., Rakotamanana, H.F., Rüter, J., Sagiya, M.E., Schief, J.V., Schwere, R., Abdrabo Abdelwahab, S., Shallangwa, Z.M., Šlepikaitė, S., Ssebuyungo, C., Stumpfe, W., Thobejane, M., Umuhoza, C., Walawala, B.M., Wohlfarth, S., Yonga, S., Ysebaert, S.A.O., Zindel, Y.B.M. (2023). TheMuseumsLab Digitization Workshop 2022. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin - Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7479/f0gw-7403Open Access

Kaiser, K., Madruga, C., Bilder von: Wolff, E. (2025). Objekte aus kolonialen Kontexten identifizieren und kennzeichnen. Der Entscheidungsbaum. In Kaiser, K., Heumann, I. (Hrsg.), Umgang mit kolonialen Objekten der Naturkunde: Empfehlungen, Objekte, Reflexionen (1. Auflage, 18-19). Dresden: Sandstein Kultur. URL: https://www.sandstein-kultur.de/shop/umgang-mit-kolonialen-objekten-der-naturkunde

Bisong, P.T., Dunlop, J., Madruga, C. (2023). Mammalian type material from Cameroon in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Zoosystematics and Evolution, 99(2), 503-517. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/zse.99.110878Open Access

Kaiser, K., Madruga, C., Stiftung, M.W. (2024). [Working Paper:] Tagging Objects from Colonial Contexts: A Decision Tree for Natural History Collections. Working Paper Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste, 7, 1-43. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25360/01-2024-00005Open Access

Madruga, C., Taku Bisong, P. (2025). Cameroon in Berlin (Editor Catarina Madruga); I. Archives and Catalogues (by Catarina Madruga); II. Type-Collections (by Paul Taku Bisong)Cameroon in Berlin. Zenodo. URL: https://zenodo.org/records/16874804