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:

  1. Log in, or create an account
  2. Click on a group below
  3. 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.

Tuesday, October 15, 2024 11:00 am EDT

19th century experiments in color micrography by Fernand Monpillard with Nicole Liao

Tuesday, October 15, 2024 2:00 pm EDT

Max Chervin Bridge, Brown University, "Hearing Sperm Whales"

Wednesday, October 16, 2024 2:00 pm EDT

Yingchen Kwok
Doctoral Candidate
University of Pennsylvania
History and Sociology of Science Department
"The Gender Politics of Sexual Reproduction as a Source of Hereditary Variation"
 

Thursday, October 17, 2024 1:00 pm EDT

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

Friday, October 18, 2024 12:00 pm EDT

Speaker:
 
M.s. Daniel Florence Giesbrecht (Brazil)
Researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Coimbra
Guest lecturer at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities (FLUC/UC)
Ph.D. candidate in the Contemporary History Program, University of Coimbra
 
Presentation:
 
“Divus vs. Galton: Eugenia Negativa e Catolicismo no Brasil nas Décadas de 1920 e 1930”

Friday, October 18, 2024 12:00 pm EDT

Vaccines and Society Unit - University of Oxford
This session will look at the work of the Vaccines and Society Unit, hosted at the Oxford Vaccine Group. The unit is a multidisciplinary research center that aims to improve understanding of the roles played by individuals and groups in their interaction with healthcare practice and medical research, particularly with regard to vaccination. The group draws on a variety of disciplines and engages with health scientists to produce research that bridges public health issues through policy advice, interventions, and public engagement.

Monday, October 21, 2024 10:30 am EDT

 
Group Discussion: What do we mean by "science" when we study the history of science in early South Asia?
 
Co-facilitated by Eric Gurevitch (Vanderbilt University), Lisa Brooks (University of Alberta), and Dagmar Wujastyk (University of Alberta):
 

Monday, October 21, 2024 8:00 pm EDT

Topic: The Jōdo Shinshū Embrace of Science in Late Meiji and Taishō Japan: Science, Secularism, and Buddhism in the Thought of Ishikawa Seishō and Fujikawa Yū
Presenters: Tomoko Yoshida and Stephen Weldon
If you are able, please read the attached article that we will be discussing during this session.

Tuesday, October 22, 2024 10:00 am EDT

 Alexander Blum - Sharing Plans and Ideas for the 2025 Quantum Centenary

Tuesday, October 22, 2024 1:00 pm EDT

Henrique Oliveira, Department of Global Studies, University of Lisbon
"The making of the world's deepest piers - matrix analysis and model testing for seismic design in the Tagus River Bridge project (1959- 1962)"

Wednesday, October 23, 2024 10:00 am EDT

Ranee Prakash (Natural History Museum, London), "Samuel Browne- a cross-cultural study of medicinal plant use in India"
Prakash, R. 1, Carine, M.1, & Hawkins, J.A.2
1 Natural History Museum, South Kensington, UK
2 University of Reading, UK

Wednesday, October 23, 2024 11:00 am EDT

"Collective Fears, Uncertainties and Distrust: Biopolitics and Infodemics during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Turkey." Ayşecan Terzioğlu, Sabancı University (Istanbul)
 

Thursday, October 24, 2024 11:00 am EDT

Kierri Price (Birkbeck, London/Wellcome Collection), 'Materiality, Embodiment, and Lived Experience in Medieval English Medical Manuscripts'

Friday, October 25, 2024 11:00 am EDT

A discussion with Guru Madhavan, author of Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2024), https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393651461.

Monday, October 28, 2024 11:00 am EDT

Tasha Fijke-Epstein

Friday, November 1, 2024 12:00 pm EDT

Kristen Frederick-Frost (National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution), "It’s rad but radioactive: the dilemma of Robert Abbe’s medical radium"

Monday, November 4, 2024 12:30 pm EST

*NOTE SPECIAL DATE & TIME*
"Translating, Trying and Modifying: Early Modern Ottoman Pharmacopeias"
Duygu Yildirim (University of Tennessee)
Commentator: tbc
 

Wednesday, November 6, 2024 12:00 pm EST

We are delighted to welcome Margarita Valdovinos (Inst. Investigaciones Filosóficas, UNAM, Mexico), who will share a paper on "The Study of Amerindian Languages. The Maya Case." The paper will be discussed by Prof. Fernando Armstrong-Fumero (Smith College) and Emmanuel Szurek (EHESS, Paris)
 
Abstract:

Thursday, November 7, 2024 2:00 pm EST

Michael Holleran, "The Urban Ditch: Landscape, Life and Afterlives"
 

Friday, November 8, 2024 11:00 am EST

*NOTE SPECIAL DATE*
Amanda Lanzillo, Pious Labour: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India (Berkeley: UC Press.), introduction & chapter 5.

Friday, November 8, 2024 12:30 pm EST
  • Nicholas Misukanis, The Battle on the Border: Gorleben, Nuclear Waste, and Helmut Schmidt’s Quest for German Energy Autonomy
Tuesday, November 12, 2024 9:00 am EST

John Goldsmith (University of Chicago), "Information Theory for Linguists" 

Wednesday, November 13, 2024 9:30 am EST

Michel Janssen - "Drawing the line between kinematics and dynamics in special relativity"
Guest Expert: Michel Janssen

Wednesday, November 13, 2024 12:00 pm EST

Paul Smith (University of Warwick) on Cezanne and autistic color perception
Organizer: Giulia Simonini

Thursday, November 14, 2024 9:00 am EST

*NOTE SPECIAL TIME*
Susanna Ferguson (Smith College): God’s Harmonies, Multispecies Hierarchies, and Plant Belonging in the Arab Renaissance

Thursday, November 14, 2024 12:00 pm EST

November 14, 2024 (***RESCHEDULED***)
 
Dr Katherine Arnold, Lecturer in Environmental History at University of Liverpool (UK)
 
Title: The Will of Welwitsch: African Botanical Collections and Ownership in the Late Nineteenth Century

Friday, November 15, 2024 12:00 pm EST

Panel on Recent Books on the History of Global Health
A discussion with four authors on their recent books on the history of global health/ global health studies. 
 
Panelists:
Yi-Tang Lin - Statistics and the Language of Global Health: Institutions and Experts in China, Taiwan, and the World, 1917-1960 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) 
Carolina Matos - Gender, Communications, and Reproductive Health in International Health and Development (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2023)

Monday, November 18, 2024 10:30 am EST

 
Exploring an Anti-Epidemic Protective Pill Recipe in the 15th Century Tibetan Medical Work, Relics of Countless Oral Instructions by Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorjé (1439-1475)
 
Barbara Gerke (University of Vienna)
 
 
During the plague outbreak in Gujarat (1994), the SARS outbreak (2003), and the recent
COVID-19 pandemic, Tibetan physicians in India produced and distributed protective anti-
epidemic pill amulets. One of these is the “9-compound black pill” or Nakpo Gujor (nag po dgu

Monday, November 18, 2024 8:00 pm EST

Topic: Evolution, Strategy, and Nichiren Buddhism in Modern Japan.
Presenter: Clinton Godart

Tuesday, November 19, 2024 2:00 pm EST

Anna Guasco, Oregon State University, "'Could do better to stick to his fish’: Knowledge, Power, and Authority in Gray Whale Science.”

Wednesday, November 20, 2024 2:00 pm EST

Carlo Sariego "“Is Daddy Having a Baby?” Speculation and Race-Making in 20th-century Histories of Male Pregnancy""

Friday, November 22, 2024 11:00 am EST

A discussion with Konstantinos Chatzis, author of Forecasting Travel in Urban America: The Socio-Technical Life of an Engineering Modeling World, Engineering Studies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023), https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10359.001.0001.

Monday, November 25, 2024 11:00 am EST

 
Caleb Shelburne (Department of the History of Science, Harvard University) will present "Leeches for the ‘Sick Man of Europe’: Science and the Environment in the Ottoman Leech Industry, 1830-1870," followed by a discussion.
 

Tuesday, November 26, 2024 10:00 am EST

Wright, Aaron Sidney. “Nascent Pairs and Virtual Possibilities.” In More than Nothing: A History of the Vacuum in Theoretical Physics, 1925-1980. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190062804.003.0003.
 

Tuesday, November 26, 2024 1:00 pm EST

Carlo Sariego, Department of Sociology & Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Yale University
“Is Daddy Having a Baby?” Speculation and Race-Making in 20th-century Histories of Male Pregnancy"

Wednesday, November 27, 2024 10:00 am EST

Caroline Cornish (Kew), "Hidden hands and the development of economic botany"
Abstract:

Wednesday, November 27, 2024 11:00 am EST

"Disease and Death in Early 19th Century Istanbul as Recorded in Ottoman Death Registers" Gülhan Balsoy & Cihangir Gündoğdu (Istanbul Bilgi University)

Wednesday, December 4, 2024 12:00 pm EST

 
We are delighted that in December we will host Michael Edwards, Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Sydney to discuss his work in progress:
 
Wheels Turning: Anthropological Solidarity, Engaged Buddhism, and a Return to the 1990s
 

Thursday, December 5, 2024 2:00 pm EST

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!

Friday, December 6, 2024 12:00 pm EST

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:

Monday, December 9, 2024 11:00 am EST

Whitney Barlow Robles

Tuesday, December 10, 2024 9:00 am EST

Judy Kaplan (Science History Institute), "The Information Science of Linguistics"

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 9:30 am EST

Donald Salisbury, Kurt Sundermeyer - "Léon Rosenfeld’s general theory of constrained Hamiltonian dynamics“
Guest Experts: Donald Salisbury, Kurt Sundermeyer

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 12:00 pm EST

Amy Woolf and Sarah Corbyn Woolf  (Woolf Color and Design) on color palettes and creating and color schemes
Organizer: Sarah Lowengard

Thursday, December 12, 2024 10:00 am EST

Oleksandr Polianichev (Södertörn University): Russia's Own Tropics: Empire and Exotic Plants in the South Caucasus

Thursday, December 12, 2024 12:00 pm EST

Reading Club / Holiday Gathering

Friday, December 13, 2024 12:30 pm EST
  • Building a Bibliography! What are the best works in energy history? Both classics and new works? 
Monday, December 16, 2024 10:30 am EST

 
Annotating the Bṛhatsaṃhitā in Persian? A Discussion
 
Lingli Li (EHESS - University of Göttingen)
 

Monday, December 16, 2024 8:00 pm EST

Topic: Jinshu Kairyо̄: The 'Race Improvement' Debate in Japan, 1870-1890
Presenter: Subo Wijeyeratne

Tuesday, December 17, 2024 2:00 pm EST

DEEPMED Project, "Visualizing the 3D Mediterranean (and beyond?): A Work in Progress Session"

Wednesday, December 18, 2024 2:00 pm EST

Margaret Andersen "“France has about 1,500 artificial beings!”: Artificial insemination by donor (AID) in post-war France"

Thursday, January 2, 2025 2:00 pm EST

No meeting. Happy 2025!

Wednesday, January 8, 2025 9:30 am EST

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

Wednesday, January 8, 2025 12:00 pm EST

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
 

Thursday, January 9, 2025 10:00 am EST

Bellinda Widmann Kambili (Leuphana University): tbc

Thursday, January 9, 2025 12:00 pm EST

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: 

Friday, January 10, 2025 11:00 am EST

Lightning Talks

Friday, January 10, 2025 12:30 pm EST
  • 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
Monday, January 13, 2025 10:30 am EST

*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
 

Tuesday, January 14, 2025 9:00 am EST

Allegra Giovine (TBA)

Wednesday, January 15, 2025 2:00 pm EST

Richardson, Sarah S. The maternal imprint: The contested science of maternal-fetal effects. University of Chicago Press, 2021.

Tuesday, January 21, 2025 2:00 pm EST

Katharine Anderson, York University

Wednesday, January 22, 2025 10:00 am EST

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

Monday, January 27, 2025 11:00 am EST

Tuomas Rasalnen

Friday, February 7, 2025 12:00 pm EST

Andrea Weeks (George Mason University), "Lessons learned from SISRIS, a US-based initiative to support inclusive and sustainable collections-based biodiversity research infrastructure."
 

Monday, February 10, 2025 10:30 am EST

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

Wednesday, February 12, 2025 12:00 pm EST

Tanne Bloks
Sowerby's Chromatometer of 1809
Learn how to use a paper tool devised by James Sowerby. (1757-1822). He published the chromaometert in A New Elucidation of Colours, Original, Prismatic, and Material (1809) to show how to visualise spectral colors and, in particular, the inverted spectrum (notoriously) discussed by Goethe in his Farbenlehre (1810)
 
Organizer: Giulia Simonini

Thursday, February 13, 2025 10:00 am EST

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]

Thursday, February 13, 2025 12:00 pm EST

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).

Friday, February 14, 2025 12:30 pm EST
  • Nataliia Laas, Waste Anxieties in the Late Soviet Union
  • Jan Wachter, Energy Policy in East Central Europe
Tuesday, February 18, 2025 2:00 pm EST

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

Wednesday, February 19, 2025 2:00 pm EST

Don Opitz

Monday, February 24, 2025 11:00 am EST

Leah Mahmut

Wednesday, February 26, 2025 10:00 am EST

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

Friday, March 7, 2025 12:00 pm EST

Erin McLeary (Mütter Museum)

Wednesday, March 12, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

Leib Celnik (Johns Hopkins). Revisiting "Polemics" and "History" sections of Goethe's Farbenlehre.
Organizer: Sarah Lowengard

Thursday, March 13, 2025 10:00 am EDT

*NOTE DIFFERENT TIME ZONE CHANGE WITH NORTH AMERICA*
Olga Smith (Newcastle University): Ecopolitical Aesthetics of Weeds
 

Thursday, March 13, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

Leah Malamut, PhD candidate, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

Friday, March 14, 2025 11:00 am EDT

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

Friday, March 14, 2025 12:30 pm EDT
  • 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
Monday, March 17, 2025 10:30 am EDT

 
TBD
 
Agathe Keller (CNRS / Université Paris Cité)
 
 

Tuesday, March 18, 2025 2:00 pm EDT

Derek Nelson, Everett Community College

Wednesday, March 19, 2025 2:00 pm EDT

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

Friday, March 21, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

UCLA Heat Lab
 
Panelists:
Bharat Venkat (UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics)

Monday, March 24, 2025 11:00 am EDT

Luisa Reis Castro

Tuesday, March 25, 2025 1:00 pm EDT

Enrico Beltramini, Notre Dame de Namur University, California

Wednesday, March 26, 2025 10:00 am EDT

Akosua Paries-Osei (Royal Holloway, University of London), "Seditious Seed of Forbidden Flowers: The legacy of Okra in the Reproductive Resistance of Enslaved women"

Wednesday, April 9, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

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

Thursday, April 10, 2025 10:00 am EDT

Sahar Bazzaz (College of the Holy Cross): Plants of the Red Sea Littoral: PE Botta's Expedition to Yemen, 1836

Thursday, April 10, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

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
 

Friday, April 11, 2025 11:00 am EDT

"Quarantine in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Space, Objects, and Bodies"
Marina Inì (University of Cambridge)
Commentator tbc

Friday, April 11, 2025 12:30 pm EDT
  • Nicholas Ostrum, Extracting Concessions and Losing Ground: The Twin Failures of Souédie and the Euphrates Dam, 1963-1969
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 2:00 pm EDT

Zi Yun Huang, University of Chicago

Monday, April 21, 2025 10:30 am EDT

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

Wednesday, April 23, 2025 10:00 am EDT

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)"

Monday, April 28, 2025 11:00 am EDT

Erica Fischer

Friday, May 2, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

Reed Gochberg (Concord Museum)

Thursday, May 8, 2025 10:00 am EDT

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

Thursday, May 8, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

TBD

Friday, May 9, 2025 12:30 pm EDT
  • Syllabus share! What should be on a syllabus for energy history and energy-related topics? 
Wednesday, May 14, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

Joyce Dixon, title TBD
Organizer: Giulia Siimonini

Monday, May 19, 2025 10:30 am EDT

 
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.
 

Tuesday, May 20, 2025 2:00 pm EDT

E. M. Nielsen, Brown University

Wednesday, May 28, 2025 10:00 am EDT

Catarina Madruga (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin), Archival collections and specimens from German “Kamerun" in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin 

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

What is it about Prussian blue? [tentative]
Prussian blue has a winding history that includes a myth-like origin story, rapid international success, a range of adapted uses in art, industry & trade, medical uses, and contested efforts to understand its formation and structure.
I'm beginning to think about a meeting to discuss the multivalent nature of colors using Prussian blue as a reference point.

Thursday, August 14, 2025 10:00 am EDT

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