Working Groups
The Consortium invites scholars to join our topical working groups for challenging and collegial discussion of interesting publications in their fields and of each others’ works-in-progress.
Each group meets monthly. All interested scholars are welcome to participate via online video conferencing.
To join a group:
- Log in, or create an account
- Click on a group below
- Click on the "Membership" tab and select "Request Group Membership"
Submit a discussion paper for one of the working groups.
Upcoming Meetings
Please set your timezone.
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
Deadly Colour: A Roundtable
Tony Travis (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) on 'Dangerous Dyes: A Different History of the Synthetic Dye Industry'and Chiara Palandri (National Library of Norway) on 'A Voyage pittoresque in Norway through Colour Prints, 1789–c.1815'
Organizer: Elizabeth Savage
Bismark Asamoah (University of Ghana): Ethno-Archaeological Study of Traditional Medicine at Kodiabe, Ghana
January 9, 2025
Dr Abbi Flint, Research Associate in History at Newcastle University (UK)
and
Dr Rose Ferraby, independent archaeologist and artist (UK)
Title: Fish Out of Water: Exploring the History, Meaning and Materiality of a Museum Mercreature
Abstract:
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) -
- Aleksandra Kaye and Bernardo S. Buarque, From Wells to Woes: Divergent Legacies of Early Oil Extraction in Galicia and Taranaki
- Mercedes Fernández-Paradas, Carlos Larrinaga Rodríguez, and Antonio J. Pinto, Franco-Hispanic Energy Market in the 1930s: How Gas and Electricity Evolved During European Interwar
*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.
Richardson, Sarah S. The maternal imprint: The contested science of maternal-fetal effects. University of Chicago Press, 2021.
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:
Speaker:
Prof. Francesco Cassata
Full Professor in Contemporary History, University of Genoa
Presentation:
"Reconstructing 'Dante's Race': Fabio Frassetto and the International Committee for Anthropological Standardization (SAS)."
The lecture will be delivered in English.
Suggested Readings:
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.
Katharine Anderson, York University, "To the Bathyzone: William Beebe, the Modern Observer and Oceanic Natural History”
Anna Toledano (Stanford), "Black and native laborers at the Viceregal Botanical Garden in late 18th-century Mexico City"
Tuomas Räsänen (Professor, University of Eastern Finland) will present a talk: ‘Arachnophobia Finnish Style’ connected to the forthcoming book he is co-editing: "Human-Bug Encounters in Multispecies Networks" (Brill) followed by a discussion.
Alex Blum and Martin Jähnert - "Quantum mechanics, radiation, and the equivalence proof."
Andrea Weeks (George Mason University), "Lessons learned from SISRIS, a US-based initiative to support inclusive and sustainable collections-based biodiversity research infrastructure."
*Note Special Date*
Ritual and Medicine in Indian Alchemy
Patricia Sauthoff (Hong Kong Baptist University)
Mark Liberman, Linguistic Data Consortium (TBA)
Glenn Fleishman (independant comics and printing historian) on 'How Comics Were Made: Dawn of the Dots'
Louis Champion (IRD France - 232 DIADE): L'origine et la diffusion de l'hibiscus (hibiscus sabdarifa): Parcours d'une plante aux racines africaines et son impact social et culturel
[talk in French with a powerpoint presentation in English, the Q&A will be in French and English]
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).
"Mercurial Bloodletting: Bodily Fluids in Early Modern Alchemical Iconography"
Sergei Zotov (Warwick)
Commentator: TBC
- Nataliia Laas, Waste Anxieties in the Late Soviet Union
- Jan Wachter, Energy Policy in East Central Europe
Akihisa Setoguchi (Kyoto) on 'Celebrating Darwin in Japan: The “Success” and “Failure” of the Reception of Evolutionary Theory'
David McCaskey, University of California, Riverside, "Net Losses: The Failures and Successes of Trawling in French Indochina"
Don Opitz
Johannes Hagmann - A Quantum Insight: Deutsches Museum exhibition
Hugo Rueda (SSOM, McGill), "Taxonomical Clashes. Indigenous Material Culture in the Natural History Museum of Chile during the 19th century"
Naomi Adiv, "Last Bathhouse Standing: The Allen Street Public Bath, New York City, 1905-1975"
Colorways in African Traditions
Presenters: Laurence Douny (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin) & Dame Kane (Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar)
Organizer: Sarah Lowengard
Olga Smith (Newcastle University): Ecopolitical Aesthetics of Weeds
Leah Malamut, PhD candidate, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
"'God's Gift to the People of the Orient': Coffee, Slavery, and Medicine in Early Modern Tuscany"
Lucia Dacome (University of Toronto)
Commentator: TBC
- Jake Stephen Milner, Decarbonising Deindustrial Places: Industrial Collective Memories in the Age of Green Economic Development
- Aditi Basu, Hinduism and Sun Deification in India: Relevance in the 21st Century as Solar Energy
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)
Derek Nelson, Everett Community College
Kristine Palmieri, PhD
Gastwissenschaftlerin / Visiting Researcher
Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklarung
Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
UCLA Heat Lab
Panelists:
Bharat Venkat (UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics)
Alexei Kojevnikov - Quantum physics in the Soviet Union
Enrico Beltramini, Notre Dame de Namur University, California
Akosua Paries-Osei (Royal Holloway, University of London), "Seditious Seed of Forbidden Flowers: The legacy of Okra in the Reproductive Resistance of Enslaved women"
Philippa Barr, "The Divided Sky: Producing Atmosphere through Spatial Segregation in Milan"
Pedro Raposo (The Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University) and Tiago Saraiva (Drexel University)
Teaching with Collections
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
Sahar Bazzaz (College of the Holy Cross): Plants of the Red Sea Littoral: PE Botta's Expedition to Yemen, 1836
[this is a joint event with the online lecture series "Ecologies, Collections, and Contested Heritage: (Un-)Natural History and Italian Colonialism in Africa", co-convened by Jermay Michael Gabriel and Vera-Simone Schulz]
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
"Quarantine in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Space, Objects, and Bodies"
Marina Inì (University of Cambridge)
Commentator: TBC
- Nicholas Ostrum, Extracting Concessions and Losing Ground: The Twin Failures of Souédie and the Euphrates Dam, 1963-1969
Zi Yun Huang, University of Chicago
The Sumhuram Yakṣī, an index of metal reuse?
Divya Kumar-Dumas (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW))
Women in the History of Quantum Physics: Beyond Knabenphysik
Editors:
Patrick Charbonneau, Michelle Frank, Margriet van der Heijden, and Daniela Monaldi
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
- Syllabus share! What should be on a syllabus for energy history and energy-related topics?
Joyce Dixon, title TBD
Organizer: Giulia Siimonini
Speaker
Prof. Gracyelle Costa Ferreira
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
Learn more: Prof. Gracyelle Costa Ferreira - GPSankofa
Presentation:
Details coming soon
Suggested Readings:
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.
E. M. Nielsen, Brown University
Elena Schaa - "Heisenberg's Experience of the Matrix Mechanics on Helgoland."
Catarina Madruga (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin), Archival collections and specimens from German “Kamerun" in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
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.
Tiago Silva Alves Muniz (Universidade Federal de Goiás): The Struggle for Natural Rubber Species: Local Processes and Global Stories Moved (Around) the World
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.
Tuli Mekondjo (Windhoek): Oimbodi Yedu: Herbs of the Soil
Banji Chona (Lusaka): The Fragile Lexicon: How Botanical Words Fail to Reflect Zambezia’s Living Plant Knowledge
Romuald Tchibozo (Université d'Abomey-Calavi): Plants in Contemporary Art: The Case of Meschac Gaba in Benin