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 "Request Membership" link
Submit a discussion paper for one of the working groups.

Upcoming Meetings

Please set your timezone.

Wednesday, July 2, 2025, 10:00 - 11:30 am EDT

Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond, "Science in the Twenty-First Century," Philosophy World Democracy, 27 July 2021.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EDT

Charlotte Ribeyrol (Sorbonne Université and Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) on 'the Colourful Literary Imagination of the Victorian architect William Burges (1827-1881)'

Thursday, July 10, 2025, 10:00 - 11:30 am EDT

Tuli Mekondjo (Windhoek): Oimbodi Yedu: Herbs of the Soil

Tuesday, July 15, 2025, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm EDT

THE OVERLOOKED AND COLOURFUL CAREER OF R. D. GRAY
By Peter Domankiewicz 

In the January of 1894, Frederic Ives was in the midst of a long sojourn in the UK, lapping up the acclaim for his colour system at one learned society after another, when he had a nasty shock. Back in New York, somebody else was projecting photographs in colour, and reports in both American and British publications said they were better than his. Ives’ wrath was immediately focused on his rival, one R. D. Gray, and he lambasted him in print.

Tuesday, July 15, 2025, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EDT

Publishing Roundtable!
Meet journal editors from Mainsheet, Coastal Studies & Society, The Northern Mariner,  and Animal History and ask them anything about submitting your article

Thursday, August 14, 2025, 10:00 - 11:30 am EDT

Banji Chona (Lusaka): Weeds to Who? An Ecological Reimagining of Zambezian Plants

Tuesday, August 19, 2025, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EDT

Oceans Book Club!
Click here to vote for the book: https://forms.gle/dmpH3EWN6rJbNQKN7

Thursday, September 11, 2025, 10:00 - 11:30 am EDT

Romuald Tchibozo (Université d'Abomey-Calavi): Plants in Contemporary Art: The Case of Meschac Gaba in Benin

Thursday, October 9, 2025, 10:00 - 11:30 am EDT

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