Working Groups

ARCHIVING

In conversation with Laura Stark (Vanderbilt), Adrianna Link (APS), and Peter Sachs Collopy (Caltech).

Recommended resources to review for this meeting include: 

-The Vernacular Archive of Normal Volunteers: https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/catalog/med00524

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

Antara Chatterjee, "Embodied and Gendered Experiences of Illness: Some Fictional Representations of Tagore and Manik Bandyopadhyay"

Probing Gravity: Astronomy's Use in Testing Relativity 

Led by Connemara Doran. 

Behind the collections: a conversation with the Archivist.

In this session, speakers will share their experiences as archivists and reflect on the essential role they play in supporting historical research.

Elizabeth Kata (IAEA): Elizabeth Kata is the Unit Head of the Archives Unit at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria. She received her Master's in Historical Research, Historical Auxiliary Sciences and Archival Studies from the Austrian Institute of Historical Research at the University of Vienna.

Thomas Simpson, University of Warwick

"Knowing Earth through ice: frozen matter and planetary sciences before ESS"

Isobel Oliver (University of Oxford), "Dr James Hunt and the Law of Race: Reassessing the 'Anthropological Controversy'"

Dead Cipher Walking: The Long Retirement of Triple Data Encryption Standard and its
Institutional Afterlife (1977-2025)

Pooja Shyamsundar presents their work-in-progress on the triple-DES cryptographic standard. Please read the attached draft in advance of the meeting.

Sarah Stanford McIntyre (University of Colorado), “Poison at the Pump: How Gender Shaped American Responses to Hazardous Automobility in the Interwar Period"

Amelia Hutchinson (Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum)

From Archive to Outcrop: Living with Risk in the Mining Towns of Habsburg Hungary, c.1550-1750

Lightning sessions -- 3-10 minutes on your current research. End your remarks with a question you are wrestling with!

Henrique Antunes

Alan Sumler

Paul Gillis-Smith - the patient/prophet

Ramzi Fawaz

Laura Appleman - psychedelic wellness grifters

Kevin Whitesides - Psychedelic Cultures journal

Raúl Aranovich (UC Davis), "A conceptual history of ergativity"

Elma Brenner (Wellcome Collection) Craft-Based Knowledge in Medieval French Leprosaria: A Continuing Study

Jan Potters, Sharpening Philosophical Concepts: Thomas Kuhn and the History of Quantum Physics (forthcoming HOPOS)

Meeting Topic:  How can we measure or identify colours, and why does terminology matter?

Nuance: Ashank Chandapillai on the problems of color in the history of astronomical photometry.

A series of short talks about the science and art of color description featuring:

Colour Reference Systems in Architectural Practice, using the NCS as an example, 
with Kine Angelo (Department of Architecture and Technology, NTNU, Norway)

David E. Dunning (Smithsonian), TBA.

Speaker
Alan Sokal
Professor of Mathematics, University College London (UCL)
Professor Emeritus of Physics, New York University (NYU)

Presentation
“When Science and Politics Collide: Lysenkoism and Communist Scientists in Britain, France and Italy”

Pedro Afonso Cristovão dos Santos, Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana, "The Sargasso Sea and the 'Discovery' of the Americas: 19th Century Transnational Debates on Nautical History and Historical Geography"

Challenges and possibilities of working in a Museum.

In this session, speakers will talk about the aspects and challenges of working in a Museum.

Presentation Title: Two Apothecaries at a Crossroads: Medicinal Plants and the Diverging Futures of Pharmacy, 1880–1939

Speaker: Dr. Matti Leprêtre, Fulbright Scholar at New York University and a historian of science and pharmacy. He received his PhD in History of Science from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in 2026.