Highlights:

- Explores a historical and civic controversy surrounding Linnaeus’s place in the history of scientific racism through a large-scale classroom intervention in upper secondary history education.

- Students show an improved capacity for historical contextualisation.

- Students show a better understanding of the ways in which controversial historiographies implicate present and future.

- Outcomes suggest that this intervention can help foster a multiperspectival understanding concerning legacies of scientific racism among students.

Purpose: Prompted by the public debate during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, which challenged Linnaeus’s legacy, this paper examines how Swedish students make sense of Carl Linnaeus’s classification of humans and his alleged role in the history of scientific racism. The purpose is to explore how educational interventions can foster historical understanding and multiperspectival engagement with contested historical figures and controversial issues.

Design/methodology/approach: The study is organised around a classroom intervention across 11 classrooms. Using qualitative pre- and post-tests, we analysed how students’ knowledge and attitudes developed through activities designed to cultivate a historiographic gaze on Linnaeus’s work and legacy.

Findings: The intervention enhanced students’ knowledge of natural classification and scientific racism, as well as their capacity for historical contextualization. More students came to view Linnaeus as a racist, though this shift did not increase support for removing his monuments.

Practical implications: Findings demonstrate that classroom activities addressing contested historical legacies can foster critical historical thinking without polarising student attitudes, offering perspectives on how we may address sensitive or controversial issues in history education.