This group provides a transdisciplinary forum for scholars engaged with the cultural histories of beautification and bodily care in the premodern global world. We approach beauty practices as historically situated techniques and materials applied to the body to maintain, enhance or restore appearance. They encompass not only cosmetic treatments and grooming routines but also forms of tacit knowledge related to health, hygiene, status and identity. While the historiography of science and medicine has increasingly recognized domestic and artisanal knowledge, beauty practices remain strikingly under-explored within these frameworks. We reposition beauty not as a superficial concern but as an historically significant domain of knowledge making using the analytic tools of a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. 

We welcome researchers from across disciplines to engage in a 90-minute online discussion that can focus on a precirculated piece of writing (book chapter, article, book proposal), an oral paper presented by its author followed by a response from another scholar, or a panel of scholars that address a relevant topic from different angles. The goal of the working group is to debate and collaborate to advance beauty studies as a recognized field of historical inquiry.

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Upcoming Meetings

Monday, November 2, 2026, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EST

 

Perfume as Prophylactic Medicine in Grand Ducal Medici Tuscany 

Rose Byfleet

Fragrance played a vital role in the humoral regulation of the body in early modern Italy, serving as a form of prophylactic medicine applied in response to concerns about the quality of the air. Moving beyond traditional interpretations of perfume as a luxury commodity or marker of elite status, I propose that the use of fragrance as a tool for managing the air—and consequently health—points to a medical logic grounded in olfactory awareness that goes beyond concepts of civility. Within a Hippocratic-Galenic framework, fragrance regulated air and emotion, two of the “six non-naturals” essential to maintaining humoral balance. Drawing upon archival research and the visual and material culture of fragrance, this paper examines the use of scented jewellery, ambient fragrance, and perfumes to eat and drink at the Grand Ducal Medici court to argue that seasonal concerns and anxieties about excess humidity in both the body and atmosphere directly shaped early modern olfactory practices.

Monday, December 7, 2026, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EST

Seminar with Dorit Brixius (Dresden University of Technology) on "Crafting Care: French Noblewomen, Cosmetics, Creativity and Knowledge Exchange in the Grand Siècle".

This seminar explores the holistic personal care practices of seventeenth-century French noblewomen by drawing on the recipe compendium of Noël Vallant (1632–85), a Parisian physician. Vallant’s manuscripts reveal how cosmetics, body care, and art-making intersected with medicine, creativity, and social networks, reflecting a broader system of personal care that integrated physical health, mental stimulation, and aesthetic expression. By situating these practices within the historiography of early modern medicine, women’s history, recipe culture and artisanal knowledge, this study highlights the active role of noblewomen in producing and exchanging medico-cosmetic knowledge. The argument is two-fold: Medico-cosmetic traditions in seventeenth-century France were part of a holistic approach to female personal care. As vital components of wellness practices, they were actively shaped by noblewomen of the Grand Siècle.

Monday, February 1, 2027, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EST

Roundtable discussion and Q&A with Sajed Chowdhury (Utrecht) about his new book "Women Writers and Alchemy in Early Modern Britain" (Cambridge Universtiy Press 2026, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009744621). 

Monday, March 1, 2027, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EST

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Monday, April 5, 2027, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EDT

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Monday, May 3, 2027, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EDT

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Past Meetings

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Seminar with Sean Coughlin (Prague) on "Alchemies of Scent: Five Years of Text, Experiment, Replication"

Abstract: Ancient perfume recipes leave out a great deal of tacit knowledge: how hot to boil, how hard to press, which "myrrh" to buy. For five years the Alchemies of Scent project has treated these gaps as puzzles, reconstructing five Greco-Egyptian perfumes from Greek, Latin and Egyptian sources and testing each reading against the targets the recipes set themselves. In this talk I walk through our studies of stacte, the Mendesian and its sibling metopion, the lily perfume susinum, and a smoked oil made with sea-snail shells, and I show what the experiments taught us that the texts alone could not. Along the way I argue that a reconstruction differs from an ancient-inspired perfume in one respect: it can be wrong, and being wrong is how it teaches.

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Book presentation of 

“Beauty: the Body as Artefact. Historical Sources from Cicero to Goya”, ed. by Romana Sammern and Julia Saviello (Routledge 2026, OA, DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003464846) and 

“Selling Pharmaka, buying health in ancient Greece and Rome: retail therapy”, ed. by Laurence Totelin (Routledge 2026)

 

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Seminar on Beautifying Practices in Arabic Medieval Medical Compendia with Anna Gili (University of Padua): Medical Beauty Prescriptions. A reading of al-Rāzī's Kitāb al-Manṣūrī and al-Maǧūsī's Kitāb al-Malakī

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Rescheduled Seminar with Victoria Munn (University of Auckland) on Early Modern Hair Dye Recipes

Drawing upon her doctoral thesis, Victoria’s talk will foreground the rich hair dyeing culture in early modern Europe, and the theories and practices that underpinned it. Doing so, she will explore the epistemic, cultural and material connections between beauty and other fields of early modern knowledge. Victoria will also introduce a seventeenth-century manuscript medical and beauty recipe compendium from the French court, considering what individual sources might reveal about the transmission, use and social value of cosmetic recipes. 

 

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This meeting has been cancelled.

Seminar with Victoria Munn (University of Auckland) on Early Modern Hair Dye Recipes

Drawing upon her doctoral thesis, Victoria’s talk will foreground the rich hair dyeing culture in early modern Europe, and the theories and practices that underpinned it. Doing so, she will explore the epistemic, cultural and material connections between beauty and other fields of early modern knowledge. Victoria will also introduce a seventeenth-century manuscript medical and beauty recipe compendium from the French court, considering what individual sources might reveal about the transmission, use and social value of cosmetic recipes. 

 

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Current research: Seminar with Laurence Totelin (Cardiff University): Recreating ancient cosmetics: joys, pitfalls and engagement opportunities

Over the last ten years and more, I have experimented with recreating ancient cosmetics, the recipes of which are transmitted in medical texts, such as those written by Galen (second century CE), Aetius of Amida (sixth century CE), Paul of Aegina (seventh century CE), and the enigmatic Metrodora (perhaps first or second century CE). These recreations have given me often-unexpected insights into what cosmetics would have looked, smelt, and felt like in antiquity. These recreations have also given me opportunities to engage with varied audiences in activities that encouraged them to think about their identities, their relationship to their bodies, and their use of cosmetics. In this presentation, I reflect on my practice in recreating cosmetics, focusing on the joy and community-building aspects, but not neglecting some inherent pitfalls. As this is a presentation in a virtual space, to foster an atmosphere like that of in-person workshops, I encourage you to bring some of your preferred cosmetics and/or to engage in a craft activity such as knitting or drawing. 

Laurence Totelin is professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University. Her current research focuses on the construction of identities through the use of cosmetics in the ancient Mediterranean world, as well as on the ways in which modern cosmetic advertising draw on the ancient world(s). She is passionate about engagement with diverse audiences and encourages you to visit the Makeup Museum’s virtual exhibition ‘I’m Your Venus’, which she co-commissioned (https://www.exhibitions-makeupmuseum.org/venus)

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Reading seminar with Erin Griffey (University of Auckland) on her book Facing Decay: Beauty, Aging and Cosmetics in Early Modern Europe (Penn State University Press, 2025)

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Seminar with Katharina Seidl (Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna / Ambras Castle, Innsbruck) on the "The Art of Beauty exhibition" at Ambras Castle, Innsbruck (June-October 2025) and related exhibitions

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Reading seminar with Evelyn Welch (University of Bristol): ‘Whose Hair is it Anyway?: Beauty, Health and Shaven Heads in Early Modern Europe’. 

We will discuss Chapter 5 of her book Renaissance Skin (Manchester University Press, 2025).

Group Conveners

Montserrat Cabré giving a lecture

Montserrat Cabré

Montserrat Cabré is Professor of the History of Science at the University of Cantabria, Spain. She has published extensively on diverse aspects of medieval and early modern Western European culture, especially in relation to the history of the body and medieval women’s medical practices. In addition, one of her research lines has been the history of women’s thinking, particularly around authors who participated in the querelle des femmes.  She is currently the PI of the team research project Women's Beauty Cultures from Trota of Salerno to Marie Meurdrac, funded by the Spanish Research Agency (AEI), and is working on a book project on women's beauty and healthcare in the late medieval Crown of Aragon.

 

Erin Griffey

Erin Griffey is Professor of Art History at the University of Auckland and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in London. She has longstanding research interests in early modern European women. This research is cross-cultural and interdisciplinary and focuses on aspects of self-fashioning, adornment and display. She has published widely on Queen Henrietta Maria and the Stuart court, including the monograph On Display: Henrietta Maria and the Materials of Magnificence at the Stuart Court (Yale University Press, 2016). Other publications have focused on aspects of dress, jewellery and beauty. Her current research crosses the humanities, social sciences and the history of science and medicine to engage in textual, visual, object-based and reconstructive analysis of early modern beauty culture. Her most recent book, entitled Facing Decay: Beauty, Aging and Cosmetics in Early Modern Europe, came out in November 2025 with Penn State University Press.

 

Portrait photo, taken by Ute Brandhuber-Schmelzinger

Romana Sammern

Romana Sammern is an art historian and a permanent research scholar at the Inter-University Organization Arts & Knowledges at the University of Salzburg/Mozarteum University. She researches and teaches at the intersection of the body, image, and medicine in the early modern period. She holds a PhD in art history from Humboldt University of Berlin. In 2024, she completed her habilitation in art history and visual studies at the University of Passau. Her research has been supported, among others, by fellowships from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) in Vienna, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London, and the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung in Berlin.

 

Laurence Totelin

I'm a historian of Ancient Mediterranean science, technology, and medicine. My specific interests are in the history of pharmacy and botany, the body, cosmetics, and identity.

 

111 Members

Entomology

From the Entomology department.