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 "Membership" tab and select "Request Group Membership"

Submit a discussion paper for one of the working groups.


Upcoming Meetings

Please set your timezone.

Monday, December 9, 2024 11:00 am EST

 
Whitney Barlow Robles (Visiting Scholar, Dartmouth College) will present on her new book project, The Collector’s Paradox.
 
Abstract: A contradiction lurks behind most museum artifacts: to be preserved, they first must be
destroyed. Museums are not simply reliquaries that save things from oblivion. They are also the
angel of death, the grim reaper waiting at the door. Focusing on animal specimens and other
objects, The Collector’s Paradox excavates 300 years of collecting that created the modern

Tuesday, December 10, 2024 9:00 am EST

Judy Kaplan (Science History Institute), "The Information Science of Linguistics"
 

Tuesday, December 10, 2024 12:00 pm EST

Beyond the Golden Age: Non-Western Science in the Persianate World (1500-1750) after the Supposed Death of Science in Islam
 
Younes Mahdavi and Peter Barker, University of Oklahoma
 

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 9:30 am EST

Donald Salisbury, Kurt Sundermeyer - "Léon Rosenfeld’s general theory of constrained Hamiltonian dynamics“
Guest Experts: Donald Salisbury, Kurt Sundermeyer

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 12:00 pm EST

Building Color Schemes - Theory and Practice
 
Join Architectural Color Designer, Amy Woolf for an exploration of creating successful color schemes -- including some history, a little theory and actual practice.
 
Together we will think about and discuss methods of combining colors and follow up with some hands-on exercises with color samples you have obtained in advance. (See below.)
 

Thursday, December 12, 2024 10:00 am EST

Oleksandr Polianichev (Södertörn University): Russia's Own Tropics: Empire and Exotic Plants in the South Caucasus

Thursday, December 12, 2024 12:00 pm EST

Collection Ecologies Holiday Gathering!
 
Memes, Memories, & Museum Hazards 

Friday, December 13, 2024 11:00 am EST

"Book Proposal - Geometric Medicine: Art, Proof, and Efficacy in the Medieval Islamic World"
Meekyung Macmurdie (Utah)
 

Friday, December 13, 2024 12:30 pm EST
  • Building a Bibliography! What are the best works in energy history? Both classics and new works? 
Monday, December 16, 2024 10:30 am EST

 
Knowledge, Translation, and Commentary: Perso-Islamic Scholars’ Engagement with Sanskritic Tradition
 
Lingli Li (EHESS - University of Göttingen)
 

Tuesday, December 17, 2024 11:00 am EST

We (Janine + Hanin) are going on a break this December and will be back with a vengeance in January 2026. As a present to the members of this exciting, energizing, and downright colorful working group, we are preparing a giveaway game. So stay tuned to the newsletters we send you and who knows what Santa Clause will be sending you this holiday season!
We look forward to seeing you all in January and to enjoy a wonderful new year together filled with niche color processes, even nich-er scientists and off-the-beaten-track collections.

Tuesday, December 17, 2024 2:00 pm EST

DEEPMED Project, "Visualizing the 3D Mediterranean (and beyond?): A Work in Progress Session"

Wednesday, December 18, 2024 2:00 pm EST

Margaret Andersen "Gender, Nation, and the Family in the Post-War Era: Artificial Insemination in Question"

Friday, December 20, 2024 12:00 pm EST

Speaker:
Prof. Francesco Cassata
Professor of Contemporary History, University of Genoa
 
Presentation:
"Reconstructing 'Dante's Race': Fabio Frassetto and the International Committee for Anthropological Standardization (SAS)."
The lecture will be delivered in English.
 
Suggested Readings:
Coming soon.
To learn more about Prof. Cassata, please click here.

Thursday, January 2, 2025 2:00 pm EST

No meeting. Happy 2025!

Wednesday, January 8, 2025 9:30 am EST

Sebastian De Haro - "Noether’s Theorems and Energy in General Relativity"
Felix Klein - "Zu Hilberts erster Note über die Grundlagen der Physik"
Guest Expert: Sebastian De Haro

Wednesday, January 8, 2025 12:00 pm EST

Deadly Colour: A Roundtable
Tony Travis (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) on 'Dangerous Dyes: A Different History of the Synthetic Dye Industry'and Chiara Palandri (National Library of Norway) on 'A Voyage pittoresque in Norway through Colour Prints, 1789–c.1815'

Organizer: Elizabeth Savage
 

Thursday, January 9, 2025 10:00 am EST

Bismark Asamoah (University of Ghana): Ethno-Archaeological Study of Traditional Medicine at Kodiabe, Ghana

Thursday, January 9, 2025 12:00 pm EST

January 9, 2025
Dr Abbi Flint, Research Associate in History at Newcastle University (UK)
and
Dr Rose Ferraby, independent archaeologist and artist (UK)
 
Title: Fish Out of Water: Exploring the History, Meaning and Materiality of a Museum Mercreature
 
Abstract: 

Friday, January 10, 2025 11:00 am EST

This meeting we'll host a round of 'Lightning Talks' by group members, each taking 5 minutes to share work that falls under our group's diverse umbrella.
If you are interested in offering a short 5-minute talk about a project, an upcoming book, a new idea, or an area of future collaboration, please do get in touch!

Friday, January 10, 2025 12:30 pm EST
  • Aleksandra Kaye and Bernardo S. Buarque, From Wells to Woes: Divergent Legacies of Early Oil Extraction in Galicia and Taranaki
  • Mercedes Fernández-Paradas, Carlos Larrinaga Rodríguez, and Antonio J. Pinto, Franco-Hispanic Energy Market in the 1930s: How Gas and Electricity Evolved During European Interwar
Monday, January 13, 2025 10:30 am EST

*Note Special Date*
 
The Suśruta Project Group Presentation
https://sushrutaproject.org/
 
Dominik Wujastyk (University of Alberta), Deepro Chakraborty (University of Alberta), Harshal Bhatt (The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda), Vandana Lele, and other Suśruta Project Group Members TBD
 

Tuesday, January 14, 2025 9:00 am EST

Allegra Giovine (TBA)

Wednesday, January 15, 2025 2:00 pm EST

Richardson, Sarah S. The maternal imprint: The contested science of maternal-fetal effects. University of Chicago Press, 2021.

Thursday, January 16, 2025 1:00 pm EST

 
This year, our sessions function as a space for members to give and receive feedback on works-in-progress (WIP). This week we will engage with the following: 
 

Tuesday, January 21, 2025 2:00 pm EST

Katharine Anderson, York University

Wednesday, January 22, 2025 10:00 am EST

Anna Toledano (Stanford), "Black and native laborers at the Viceregal Botanical Garden in late 18th-century Mexico City"

Monday, January 27, 2025 11:00 am EST

Tuomas Rasalnen

Tuesday, January 28, 2025 10:00 am EST

Alex Blum and Martin Jähnert - "Quantum mechanics, radiation, and the equivalence proof."

Friday, February 7, 2025 12:00 pm EST

Andrea Weeks (George Mason University), "Lessons learned from SISRIS, a US-based initiative to support inclusive and sustainable collections-based biodiversity research infrastructure."
 

Monday, February 10, 2025 10:30 am EST

*Note Special Date*
 
Ritual and Medicine in Indian Alchemy
 
Patricia Sauthoff (Hong Kong Baptist University)
 

Tuesday, February 11, 2025 9:00 am EST

Mark Liberman, Linguistic Data Consortium (TBA)

Wednesday, February 12, 2025 12:00 pm EST

 
Organizer: Giulia Simonini

Thursday, February 13, 2025 10:00 am EST

Louis Champion (IRD France - 232 DIADE): L'origine et la diffusion de l'hibiscus (hibiscus sabdarifa): Parcours d'une plante aux racines africaines et son impact social et culturel
 
[talk in French with a powerpoint presentation in English, the Q&A will be in French and English]

Thursday, February 13, 2025 12:00 pm EST

Andrew Watson, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Saskatchewan and executive team member of the Network in Canadian History & Environment | Nouvelle initiative Canadienne en histoire de l'environnement (NiCHE).

Friday, February 14, 2025 12:30 pm EST
  • Nataliia Laas, Waste Anxieties in the Late Soviet Union
  • Jan Wachter, Energy Policy in East Central Europe
Tuesday, February 18, 2025 2:00 pm EST

David McCaskey, University of California, Riverside, "Net Losses: The Failures and Successes of Trawling in French Indochina"

Wednesday, February 19, 2025 2:00 pm EST

Don Opitz

Monday, February 24, 2025 11:00 am EST

Leah Mahmut

Tuesday, February 25, 2025 10:00 am EST

Johannes Hagmann - A Quantum Insight: Deutsches Museum exhibition

Wednesday, February 26, 2025 10:00 am EST

Hugo Rueda (SSOM, McGill), "Taxonomical Clashes. Indigenous Material Culture in the Natural History Museum of Chile during the 19th century"

Thursday, March 6, 2025 2:00 pm EST

Naomi Adiv, "Last Bathhouse Standing: The Allen Street Public Bath, New York City, 1905-1975"
 

Friday, March 7, 2025 12:00 pm EST

Erin McLeary (Mütter Museum)

Wednesday, March 12, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

Colorways in African Traditions
Presenters: Laurence Douny (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin) & Dame Kane (Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar)
Organizer: Sarah Lowengard

Thursday, March 13, 2025 10:00 am EDT

Olga Smith (Newcastle University): Ecopolitical Aesthetics of Weeds
 

Thursday, March 13, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

Leah Malamut, PhD candidate, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

Friday, March 14, 2025 11:00 am EDT

"'God's Gift to the People of the Orient': Coffee, Slavery, and Medicine in Early Modern Tuscany"
Lucia Dacome (University of Toronto)
Commentator: tbc
 

Friday, March 14, 2025 12:30 pm EDT
  • Jake Stephen Milner, Decarbonising Deindustrial Places: Industrial Collective Memories in the Age of Green Economic Development
  • Aditi Basu, Hinduism and Sun Deification in India: Relevance in the 21st Century as Solar Energy
Monday, March 17, 2025 10:30 am EDT

 
Some reflections on the practices of proofs in Sanskrit mathematical texts, with a special emphasis on Śaṅkara Vāriyar’s work on Mādhava’s procedure to approximate the circumference of a circle.
 
Agathe Keller (Sphere, CNRS / Université Paris Cité)
 

Tuesday, March 18, 2025 2:00 pm EDT

Derek Nelson, Everett Community College

Wednesday, March 19, 2025 2:00 pm EDT

Kristine Palmieri, PhD
Gastwissenschaftlerin / Visiting Researcher 
Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklarung 
Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg

Friday, March 21, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

UCLA Heat Lab
 
Panelists:
Bharat Venkat (UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics)

Monday, March 24, 2025 11:00 am EDT

Luisa Reis Castro

Tuesday, March 25, 2025 10:00 am EDT

Alexei Kojevnikov - Quantum physics in the Soviet Union

Tuesday, March 25, 2025 1:00 pm EDT

Enrico Beltramini, Notre Dame de Namur University, California

Wednesday, March 26, 2025 10:00 am EDT

Akosua Paries-Osei (Royal Holloway, University of London), "Seditious Seed of Forbidden Flowers: The legacy of Okra in the Reproductive Resistance of Enslaved women"

Thursday, April 3, 2025 2:00 pm EDT

Philippa Barr, "The Divided Sky: Producing Atmosphere through Spatial Segregation in Milan"
 

Friday, April 4, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

Pedro Raposo (The Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University) and Tiago Saraiva (Drexel University)
 
Teaching with Collections

Wednesday, April 9, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

Ian Dooley (School of Advanced Study, University of London) on 'A Pigment Paradigm Shift: How British Printing Ink Industrialization Revolutionized Color Printing in the Late Nineteenth Century'
 
Organizer: Elizabeth Savage

Thursday, April 10, 2025 10:00 am EDT

Sahar Bazzaz (College of the Holy Cross): Plants of the Red Sea Littoral: PE Botta's Expedition to Yemen, 1836
 
[this is a joint event with the online lecture series "Ecologies, Collections, and Contested Heritage: (Un-)Natural History and Italian Colonialism in Africa", co-convened by Jermay Michael Gabriel and Vera-Simone Schulz]

Thursday, April 10, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

April 10, 2025
Dr Nathan Bossoh, Research Fellow in History at Southampton University (UK)
 
Title: Imperial Legacies and Decolonial Futures: Curating the 'Wellcome' African Medical Material
 

Friday, April 11, 2025 11:00 am EDT

"Quarantine in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Space, Objects, and Bodies"
Marina Inì (University of Cambridge)
Commentator tbc

Friday, April 11, 2025 12:30 pm EDT
  • Nicholas Ostrum, Extracting Concessions and Losing Ground: The Twin Failures of Souédie and the Euphrates Dam, 1963-1969
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 2:00 pm EDT

Zi Yun Huang, University of Chicago

Monday, April 21, 2025 10:30 am EDT

 
The Sumhuram Yakṣī, an index of metal reuse?
 
Divya Kumar-Dumas (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW))
 

Tuesday, April 22, 2025 10:00 am EDT

Women in the History of Quantum Physics: Beyond Knabenphysik
Editors:

Patrick Charbonneau, Michelle Frank, Margriet van der Heijden, and Daniela Monaldi
 

 

Wednesday, April 23, 2025 10:00 am EDT

Jovita Yesilyurt (Natural History Museum London) and Christina Welch (University of Winchester) "Unearthing the contribution of Indigenous and enslaved African knowledge systems to the Saint Vincent Botanical Garden under Dr Anderson (1785-1811)"

Monday, April 28, 2025 11:00 am EDT

Erica Fischer

Thursday, May 1, 2025 2:00 pm EDT

Joanna Paxton Federico, "Finding the Center(s): Insitutionalizing the Science of Violence Prevention at the CDC (1977-1992)
 

Friday, May 2, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

Reed Gochberg (Concord Museum)

Thursday, May 8, 2025 10:00 am EDT

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

Thursday, May 8, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

TBD

Friday, May 9, 2025 12:30 pm EDT
  • Syllabus share! What should be on a syllabus for energy history and energy-related topics? 
Wednesday, May 14, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

Joyce Dixon, title TBD
Organizer: Giulia Siimonini

Monday, May 19, 2025 10:30 am EDT

 
Methods in the Material Histories of South Asia: Snapshot-presentations and Discussion
 
Join us for a special meeting! We invite you to use an object or an image to introduce your work in the material history of South Asia in a snapshot presentation. These presentations will be a springboard into a discussion on methods in the Material Histories of South Asia. Pre-circulated readings TBD.
 

Tuesday, May 20, 2025 2:00 pm EDT

E. M. Nielsen, Brown University

Tuesday, May 27, 2025 10:00 am EDT

Elena Schaa - "Heisenberg's Experience of the Matrix Mechanics on Helgoland." 

Wednesday, May 28, 2025 10:00 am EDT

Catarina Madruga (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin), Archival collections and specimens from German “Kamerun" in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin 

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

On the Multivalent Nature of Colors
                          Or ... what can Prussian blue tell us about color in the world?
Prussian blue has a winding history and a myriad of uses. Since discovery of the pigment in the early 18th century it has been improved, converted, adapted, substituted, and traded within a variety of platforms. It has been called the quintessential inorganic pigment. Its chemistry and physics were long misunderstood.
 

Thursday, June 12, 2025 10:00 am EDT

Tiago Silva Alves Muniz (Universidade Federal de Goiás): The Struggle for Natural Rubber Species: Local Processes and Global Stories Moved (Around) the World

Thursday, June 12, 2025 12:00 pm EDT

TBD

Thursday, July 10, 2025 10:00 am EDT

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

Thursday, August 14, 2025 10:00 am EDT

Banji Chona (Lusaka): The Fragile Lexicon: How Botanical Words Fail to Reflect Zambezia’s Living Plant Knowledge

Thursday, September 11, 2025 10:00 am EDT

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