Working Groups

This week we will be discussing the ethics of photographing violence and how to engage with such images, using Holocaust images as a case study. We will use the following readings to frame this discussion:

Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, "Incongruous Images: 'Before, during, and after' the Holocaust," History and Theory 48, no. 4 (2009): 9-25. 

Isabel Wollaston, "The Absent, the Partial, and the Iconic in Archival Photographs of the Holocaust," Jewish Culture and History 12, no. 3 (2010): 439-462.

Speaker
Alan Sokal
Professor of Mathematics, University College London (UCL)
Professor Emeritus of Physics, New York University (NYU)

Presentation
“When Science and Politics Collide: Lysenkoism and Communist Scientists in Britain, France and Italy”

Pedro Afonso Cristovão dos Santos, Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana, "The Sargasso Sea and the 'Discovery' of the Americas: 19th Century Transnational Debates on Nautical History and Historical Geography"

Challenges and Possibilities of Working in a Museum

What does it really take to work in a science museum? Behind every exhibition and every object on display is a web of people, skills, and decisions that visitors rarely see. In this session, our speakers will open the doors to that hidden world, from the historian's role in connecting research with the public to the many professions a curator relies on every day.

A little appetizer before we meet

Presentation Title: Two Apothecaries at a Crossroads: Medicinal Plants and the Diverging Futures of Pharmacy, 1880–1939

Speaker: Dr. Matti Leprêtre, Fulbright Scholar at New York University and a historian of science and pharmacy. He received his PhD in History of Science from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in 2026. 

Roundtable: History and Historiography of Forests Across the Globe

Claudia Leal, Universidad de los Andes

Ian M. Miller, University of Toronto

Adeniyi P. Asiyanbi, University of British Columbia

Moderators: Tomás Bartoletti, Sophie FitzMaurice

Please join us for a discussion of a new study of Christian spaces of care in medieval Europe: Infirmeries monastiques et hospices: Lieux de soin du Moyen Âge à l’époque moderne, ed. Anne Baud, Susan Boynton, Isabelle Cochelin, Anne Flammin (Brepols, 2026).

Symptom Interpretation in British and French Autobiographical Accounts, 1700-1850
Whitney Arnold
Assistant Professor, Comparative Literature and Medicine
Chair, Health Humanities Theme, David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Dr. Arnold will be presenting her paper during the session, to be followed by Q&A.  An abstract of her talk is attached below.

"Reading Repetition: Plague and Medicine in British Geographies of the Islamicate World, 1700–1800"
Enes Yilandiloglu (University of Helsinki)

SHOT Redux! What we learned at the SHOT meeting

The popular SHOT Redux returns, with our own Ben Gross moderating. Please join us to discuss SHOT's annual meeting, which will have just taken place. This is a chance to discuss highlights and new directions, and to learn what went on if you were not able to attend. This will have been SHOT's first virtual meeting, so please come prepared to discuss the pros and cons of meeting this way.

Cameron Daddis, PhD Candidate - History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“Bog Man” and the Body in Deep Time: Collecting the Dead in Nineteenth-Century Ireland 

Ellen  Carey  presents Women in Colour: Anna Atkins, Color Photography and Those Struck by Light

My research on the origins and history of color photography noticed an absence, prompting a question: “Where would color photography and women practitioners be without the work of Anna Atkins?”

COALITION BUILDING

In conversation with Dana Simmons (UC Riverside) and Nayanika Ghosh (Duke).

Perfume as Prophylactic Medicine in Grand Ducal Medici Tuscany 

Rose Byfleet

Chinmay Tumbe "The Age of Pandemics, 1817-1920"

Topic: Archaeoastronomy

Digital humanities and AI: use and limits as methodological tools.

In this session, speakers will introduce the area of digital humanities. They will also talk about the challenges of this area for doing research.

Giovanna Di Rosario (Polimi).

Alina Bykova, Stanford University, 

"Svalbard is a state of mind: heroism, science and the international Arctic (1920-1939)"

Charlotte Williams (University of California, Berkeley), "'Panamania' in Zonian Life: American Identity Through Archaeology’s Social Lives in the US-Panama Canal Zone (1940-1970)"

Dr. Brad Scott, Researcher at Queen Mary University of London, and Scientific Associate at the Natural History Museum, London

Privateers, Wrecks and Curiosity: The collections of George Handisyd, surgeon, 1686-92