Working Groups

New book preview - Public Health in the Premodern World: Dynamic Balances, edited by Guy Geltner,  Janna Coomans and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim (Oxford, February 2026)

Speakers: Janna Coomans (Utrecht), Edmund Hayes (Leiden), Asaf Goldschmidt (Tel Aviv), Léa Hermenault (Antwerp) and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim (Independent). 

This week, we will be reading selections from Catherine Denial's A Pedagogy of Kindness. The file includes two chapters as well as the introduction and brief conclusion. 

Our main readings will be the first two articles in the PDF below ("Janauary readings"):

Early Color Processes in Chilean Photography: Archives and Foreign Photographers (1890–1920) 
with Samuel Salgado Tello

Karen Pinto, University of Colorado-Boulder, “All the World’s an Island: A Taussigian Reading of Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Maps with an Islamicate Twist”

In this session, we will read and discuss Aswin Punathambekar's working paper, “Televisual Drag: Reimagining South Asian Film and Media Studies.”

Spring Semester Welcome Back Event: A critical reading of Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls

Host: Kelly O'Donnell,  Towson University

Lightning talks: part 2 of a 3-hour INES workshop. All working group members are invited to the other events, but INES membership is required to attend the 10am or 12pm sessions. Please register for the event here. Full workshop details are below:

Satyanad Kichenassamy Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, LMR (CNRS, UMR9008) and
GREI (EPHE-PSL and Sorbonne-Université),

Mathematical reasoning as an outgrowth of Vedic ritual.

"An Inside View of Technology and Culture," with Ruth Oldenziel, Editor-in-Chief. Join us for a conversation about the field's flagship journal, what it's publishing and what it looks for in submissions, and its visions and plans for the future. Ruth has just started a second term as chief editor. 

Frieda Beauregard and Mallory Novicoff (McGill)

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

Topic: Cosmology

Led by Connemara Doran

Rosanna Dent (Cambridge)

Speaker: Nicky Reeves 

Curator of scientific & medical history collections, Hunterian Museum & Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Scotland
https://www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian/staff/nicky-reeves/

Session Title: Literal transparency, immediacy and access

Maggie McNulty, "Denver’s Platte Farm Open Space: From Superfund Site to Community Park"

Anna Grasskamp & Anne Gerritsen, eds. Transformative Jars: Asian Ceramic Vessels as Transcultural Enclosures (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2022), Chs 4 & 7.  

Anne Gerritsen, The City of Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain an the Early Modern World (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020), Chs. 1, 11, and 12.

Briana Giasullo (Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University) 

"Unlocking Biodiversity Data with AI and Crowdsourcing"

Anna Graber (University of Minnesota), Making Mineralogy Russian: Bashkirs, Mining Administrators, and Earth Knowledges of the Urals, 1700-1819

Guest: Aaron S. Wright 

Reading: "Paul Dirac’s Seas and Bubbles" from "More than Nothing" Aaron Sidney Wright, Oxford University Press, 2024

Primary Source: Dirac, P. A. M. 1930 “Quelques Problèmes de Mécanique Quantique.” In The Collected Works of P. A. M. Dirac, 1924-1948, edited by R. H. Dalitz, 519–608. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.