Working Groups

Research Tools and Resources for the History of Astronomy

What research tools and resources have you found most helpful in your work in history of astronomy?  How do you use them?  What new resources and tools are out there?  What resources and tools would you most like to see developed and used more?  In this session, we invite group members to bring their own ideas and expertise on everything from archives and digital collections to apps, software, and AI to share about and demonstrate (when possible) to the group.  

A. Blum, D. Brill - "Tokyo Wheeler or the Epistemic Preconditions of the Renaissance of Relativity" (2020)

Primary Source: (Re)Translation of John Wheeler’s Tokyo Lecture "Discussion on the Problems of Elementary Particle Theory" (1954), which is part of the attachment of the above paper.

Color in antiquity

In this meeting, we will explore color in antiquity through recent scholarship, both from the material and theoretical perspectives. The eight invited speakers will briefly present current work-in-progress or recent results of their work on different aspects of archelogical investigation on color, followed by a final discussion.

Dr. Omid Oudbashi, University of Gothenburg, Color technology in Ancient Iran.

Banji Chona (Lusaka): tbc

Remi Gandoin, “Wind and Site Engineers, 'behind the turbines' 1971-1999"

The 60th JAS-Bio meeting will be held in Gilman Hall on Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus, April 10-11, 2026. 

This year's organizers are:

New Methods in Mining Studies II

Environmental Lifeworlds of Extraction in Africa: Methodological Insights by Iva Peša (University of Groningen)

Meeting cancelled due to Easter break.

Speaker: JJ R. Strange, PhD Candidate at University of Wisconsin-Madison

Title: Crisis in the Garden: How War and Environmental Loss Transformed Chinese Pharmaceutical Research (1935-1955)

Format: Presentation followed by Q&A

*Note Special Date*

"How to Draw the Buddha and Dissect a Corpse: Iconometry and Anatomy in Early-Modern Tibet"

Briana Brightly (Harvard University)

Commentator: Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim

Jan Gerris (University of Ghent)

Tandulaveyāliya - An ancient Jain philosophical reflection on life

Daniella McCahey (Texas Tech University) and Sam Robinson (University of York), TBA chapter from their in-progress book on the Discovery Investigations. 

Mackenzie Cooley (Hamilton College)

A discussion with Edward Beatty and Israel G. Solares, the co-editors of the open-access An Engineered World: The Role of Engineers in Global Modernity (MIT Press, 2025).

Rohan Deb Roy, (Associate Professor in South Asian History, University of Reading) ‘Nobody here… will look at a mosquito’: Entomo-political surveillance in late colonial India

Chloé Laplatine (Histoire des théories linguistiques, CNRS et Université Paris Cité)

Linguistic archives for research on North American languages and their revitalization

Yulia Frumer (Johns Hopkins) and Lee Vinsel (Virginia Tech): Technology in Motion: Relaunching a book series with The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Edgar Alejandro Hernández presents, “The Autochromes of the Mexican Alfredo Saldívar.”

Henry Schmidt (University of California, Berkeley), "Invention and Federal Ethnology in the US"

In the final third of the nineteenth century, ethnologists engaged in new ways with the matter of how and why human culture develops. In the United States, a community of ethnologists based in Washington, DC articulated their answers to those questions by drawing on the concept of ‘invention.’

Guy Erez, "Catching and Curing the Plague in the Multispecies City"