Working Groups

Sebastian De Haro - "Noether’s Theorems and Energy in General Relativity"
Felix Klein - "Zu Hilberts erster Note über die Grundlagen der Physik"
Guest Expert: Sebastian De Haro

Bismark Asamoah (University of Ghana): Ethno-Archaeological Study of Traditional Medicine at Kodiabe, Ghana

 
Lightning Talks: Group Members Sharing Recent Research
 
Featuring short presentations from:
 
- Allison Stielau (UCL) -
"Hans von Gersdorff's Feldtbuch der Wundartzney: Histories of Blood on Paper"
 
- Barbara di Gennaro Splendore (Yale) -
"The State Drug. Theriac, Pharmacy, and Politics in Early Modern Italy"
 
- Leonie Rau (MPIWG) -
"Craft Recipes In and From the Medieval Arabic-Speaking World"
 
- Shireen Hamza (Northwestern) -

*Note Special Date*
 
The Suśruta Project Group Presentation
https://sushrutaproject.org/
 
Dominik Wujastyk (University of Alberta), Deepro Chakraborty (University of Alberta), Harshal Bhatt (The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda), Vandana Lele, and other Suśruta Project Group Members TBD
 

In this session, we will read and discuss Katharine Gerbner's selected posts from her ongoing project on her grandfather, George Gerbner.

 
This year, our sessions function as a space for members to give and receive feedback on works-in-progress (WIP). This week we will engage with the following: 
 

Bernard Lightman  (York) and Ruselle Meade (Cardiff) on 'The American biologist Edward Morse and his introduction of evolution into Japan'. 

Please note that this talk will be at a different time than usual: 9.30am Eastern on Monday January 20. 

Anna Toledano (Stanford), "Black and native laborers at the Viceregal Botanical Garden in late 18th-century Mexico City"

Alex Blum and Martin Jähnert - "Quantum mechanics, radiation, and the equivalence proof."

*Note Special Date*
 
Ritual and Medicine in Indian Alchemy
 
Patricia Sauthoff (Hong Kong Baptist University)
 

Glenn Fleishman (independant comics and printing historian) on 'How Comics Were Made: Dawn of the Dots'

Andrew Watson, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Saskatchewan and executive team member of the Network in Canadian History & Environment | Nouvelle initiative Canadienne en histoire de l'environnement (NiCHE).

• Nataliia Laas, Waste Anxieties in the Late Soviet Union
• Jan Wachter, Energy Policy in East Central Europe

David McCaskey, University of California, Riverside, "Net Losses: The Failures and Successes of Trawling in French Indochina"

Leah Mahmut

Hugo Rueda (SSOM, McGill), "Taxonomical Clashes. Indigenous Material Culture in the Natural History Museum of Chile during the 19th century"

Erin McLeary (Mütter Museum)

Olga Smith (Newcastle University): Ecopolitical Aesthetics of Weeds
 

 
"'God's Gift to the People of the Orient': Coffee, Slavery, and Medicine in Early Modern Tuscany"
Lucia Dacome (University of Toronto)
Commentator: TBC

 
Some reflections on the practices of proofs in Sanskrit mathematical texts, with a special emphasis on Śaṅkara Vāriyar’s work on Mādhava’s procedure to approximate the circumference of a circle.
 
Agathe Keller (Sphere, CNRS / Université Paris Cité)
 

Kristine Palmieri, PhD
Gastwissenschaftlerin / Visiting Researcher 
Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklarung 
Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg

Luisa Reis Castro

Enrico Beltramini, Notre Dame de Namur University, California

Philippa Barr, "The Divided Sky: Producing Atmosphere through Spatial Segregation in Milan"
 

Ian Dooley (School of Advanced Study, University of London) on 'A Pigment Paradigm Shift: How British Printing Ink Industrialization Revolutionized Color Printing in the Late Nineteenth Century'
 
Organizer: Elizabeth Savage

April 10, 2025
Dr Nathan Bossoh, Research Fellow in History at Southampton University (UK)
 
Title: Imperial Legacies and Decolonial Futures: Curating the 'Wellcome' African Medical Material
 

• Nicholas Ostrum, Extracting Concessions and Losing Ground: The Twin Failures of Souédie and the Euphrates Dam, 1963-1969

 
The Sumhuram Yakṣī, an index of metal reuse?
 
Divya Kumar-Dumas (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW))
 

Jovita Yesilyurt (Natural History Museum London) and Christina Welch (University of Winchester) "Unearthing the contribution of Indigenous and enslaved African knowledge systems to the Saint Vincent Botanical Garden under Dr Anderson (1785-1811)"

Joanna Paxton Federico, "Finding the Center(s): Insitutionalizing the Science of Violence Prevention at the CDC (1977-1992)
 

Edwin Coomasaru (London): Plantation Ecologies in Sri Lankan Art: Gender, Sexuality and Environmental Aesthetics

 
"'Visual Prescription' in Yinshan Zhengyao: Image and Cure in Premodern and Modern China"
Di Wang (Oxford)
Commentator: TBC

Joyce Dixon, title TBD
Organizer: Giulia Siimonini

 
Methods in the Material Histories of South Asia: Snapshot-presentations and Discussion
 
Join us for a special meeting! We invite you to use an object or an image to introduce your work in the material history of South Asia in a snapshot presentation. These presentations will be a springboard into a discussion on methods in the Material Histories of South Asia. Pre-circulated readings TBD.
 

Elena Schaa - "Heisenberg's Experience of the Matrix Mechanics on Helgoland." 

On the Multivalent Nature of Colors
                          Or ... what can Prussian blue tell us about color in the world?
Prussian blue has a winding history and a myriad of uses. Since discovery of the pigment in the early 18th century it has been improved, converted, adapted, substituted, and traded within a variety of platforms. It has been called the quintessential inorganic pigment. Its chemistry and physics were long misunderstood.
 

Tiziana N. Beltrame, University of Padua, Italy
&
Yaël Kreplak, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
 
Title: Conserving and transforming heritage. Enquiries in the storerooms.
A presentation of the book Les réserves des musées. Écologies des collections, Les Presses du Réel, Dijon, 2024.

Banji Chona (Lusaka): The Fragile Lexicon: How Botanical Words Fail to Reflect Zambezia’s Living Plant Knowledge