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.
Short Writings Roundtable
If you have a shorter piece--an abstract, a proposal, an op-ed, etc.--that you would like feedback on, this session is for you!
Genevieve Alva Clutario, Beauty Regimes: A History of Power and Modern Empire in the Philippines, 1898–1941, Introduction and Chapter 4.
Anna Toledano (Los Altos History Museum), Nathan Smith (National Museum of Wales), Felipe Eguiarte Souza, (Pavek Museum of Electronic Communication), Olin Moctezuma-Burns (University of Cambridge), "Lost Objects: Histories and Futures of Collections": A Reprisal and Discussion of the 2024 CALM Caucus HSS Session
This session will feature a discussion of this year's CALM-sponsored session on "Lost Objects," which will take place at this year's HSS Meeting in Merida. The session abstract is as follows:
Whitney Barlow Robles (Visiting Scholar, Dartmouth College) will present on her new book project, The Collector’s Paradox.
Abstract: A contradiction lurks behind most museum artifacts: to be preserved, they first must be
destroyed. Museums are not simply reliquaries that save things from oblivion. They are also the
angel of death, the grim reaper waiting at the door. Focusing on animal specimens and other
objects, The Collector’s Paradox excavates 300 years of collecting that created the modern
Judy Kaplan (Science History Institute), "The Information Science of Linguistics"
Beyond the Golden Age: Non-Western Science in the Persianate World (1500-1750) after the Supposed Death of Science in Islam
Younes Mahdavi and Peter Barker, University of Oklahoma
Donald Salisbury, Kurt Sundermeyer - "Léon Rosenfeld’s general theory of constrained Hamiltonian dynamics“
Guest Experts: Donald Salisbury, Kurt Sundermeyer
Building Color Schemes - Theory and Practice
Join Architectural Color Designer, Amy Woolf for an exploration of creating successful color schemes -- including some history, a little theory and actual practice.
Together we will think about and discuss methods of combining colors and follow up with some hands-on exercises with color samples you have obtained in advance. (See below.)
Oleksandr Polianichev (Södertörn University): Russia's Own Tropics: Empire and Exotic Plants in the South Caucasus
Collection Ecologies Holiday Gathering!
Memes, Memories, & Museum Hazards
"Book Proposal - Geometric Medicine: Art, Proof, and Efficacy in the Medieval Islamic World"
Meekyung Macmurdie (Utah)
- Building a Bibliography! What are the best works in energy history? Both classics and new works?
Knowledge, Translation, and Commentary: Perso-Islamic Scholars’ Engagement with Sanskritic Tradition
Lingli Li (EHESS - University of Göttingen)
Topic: Jinshu Kairyо̄: The 'Race Improvement' Debate in Japan, 1870-1890
Presenter: Subo Wijeyeratne
Reading: Wijeyeratne, S., 2020. A Race to War: Japanese Public Intellectuals and Racial Explanations of the Russo-Japanese War. Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 18.
We (Janine + Hanin) are going on a break this December and will be back with a vengeance in January 2026. As a present to the members of this exciting, energizing, and downright colorful working group, we are preparing a giveaway game. So stay tuned to the newsletters we send you and who knows what Santa Clause will be sending you this holiday season!
We look forward to seeing you all in January and to enjoy a wonderful new year together filled with niche color processes, even nich-er scientists and off-the-beaten-track collections.
DEEPMED Project, "Visualizing the 3D Mediterranean (and beyond?): A Work in Progress Session"
Margaret Andersen "Gender, Nation, and the Family in the Post-War Era: Artificial Insemination in Question"
Speaker:
Prof. Francesco Cassata
Professor of 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:
Coming soon.
To learn more about Prof. Cassata, please click here.
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:
This meeting we'll host a round of 'Lightning Talks' by group members, each taking 5 minutes to share work that falls under our group's diverse umbrella.
If you are interested in offering a short 5-minute talk about a project, an upcoming book, a new idea, or an area of future collaboration, please do get in touch!
- 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
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:
Katharine Anderson, York University
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."
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)
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).
- 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"
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
- Syllabus share! What should be on a syllabus for energy history and energy-related topics?
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.
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
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