Working Groups

Expecting: Birth, Belief and Protection at Wellcome Collection

Elma Brenner (Wellcome Collection) and Kierri Price (Independent Researcher) will discuss their experiences of co-creating a public display centred on Wellcome MS.632, a medieval English birth scroll to be displayed in the UK for the first time between 24 October 2025 and 19 April 2026. 

SHOT Prometheans Panels in Luxembourg: A Debrief

All are invited to join us as we recap, discuss, and synthesize lessons learned from our four Prometheans-sponsored panels at the SHOT annual conference in Luxembourg earlier in October.

Chef Christian Irabién

SHOT Debrief! Tuesday, October 28, 1-2:30 EST

Join us for a debrief of the recent SHOT meeting, just held in Luxembourg (Oct. 8-12). Learn what went on if you were not there, and fill us in on what you found interesting if you were (or if you joined virtually). What are people talking about these days in HOT?

There are no documents to read before this meeting.

Education and Intersecting Populations in the History of Astronomy

We are delighted that in Novembre we are discussing the draft paper "Confronting Development: Ethnocide and its International Revival after 1968" by Sebastián Gil-Riaño (University of Pennsylvania)

[session postponed from Oct.2]

Reading Club!

This year we inaugurate a new session format: the Reading Club; in which we comment and discuss on a selected article or chapter. Everyone is welcome to read and comment on the piece.

For this session, please join us in reading Appadurai, Arjun. ‘The Museum, the Colony, and the Planet: Territories of the Imperial Imagination’. Public Culture 33, no. 1 (1 January 2021): 115–28. doi:10.1215/08992363-8742232.

Philippa Barr, "The Divided Sky: Regulating Atmospheric Crisis in Early Modern Milan"

Bian He and Mårten Söderblom Saarela, The Manchu Mirrors and the Knowledge of Plants and Animals in High Qing China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2025), Introduction, Chs 3 and 5.

Michelle DiMeo (Science History Institute)

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

Collaborative Research on Mining 

Josephine Musil-Gutsch (FAU)

Steven French "From a Lost History to a New Future: Is a Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Physics Viable?"

With a primary source: London and Bauer "The Theory of Observation in Quantum Mechanics"

Kilian Laclavetine (Centre for Research and Restoration of Museums of France), on 'Study of the Manufacture of 15th Century Italian Tarot Cards with a Non-Invasive Methodology'

"Orifices: Surgery and sodomy in early modern Rome"

Silvia De Renzi (Open University)

Robert Lifset, “A City Built By and On Oil: The March of the Mud hogs and Derricks in Depression-Era Oklahoma City”

Christèle Barois (CESAH)

Embryogenesis narratives and the history of ancient Indian medicine

Sonya Schoenberger, Stanford University, "Enclosing the Sea: Establishing Large Ocean Territories in the Cold War Pacific"

In this session, we will read and discuss Mariano Zarowsky's working paper (here in both English and Spanish versions): “New York, Santiago, París: las conexiones transnacionales de Seth Siegelaub, un editor marxista (1972-1991)”  and “New York, Santiago, Paris: The Transnational Connections of Seth Siegelaub, a Marxist Publisher (1972-1991).” The session will feature English and Spanish simultaneous interpretation.