Working Groups

In this session, we will read and discuss the introduction to the recently published Latin American Communication Theories: From Origins to Contemporary Approaches (edited by Carlos A. Scolari, Sandra Valdettaro and Leonarda García-Jiménez), along with the volume’s closing chapter: the editors’ interview with Raúl Fuentes Navarro.

Theriac: Beyond the Recipe (Roundtable)

Speakers: Danuta Raj, Barbara Splendore, and Katarzyna Pękacka-Falkowska

Description: TBA

Forests and/as Infrastructure

William Deringer (MIT), "Compound Interest Corrected: Discounting and the Mathematical Imagination" (Chapter 2 of The Formula That Rules Our Future: A History of Discounting).

William Deringer is an Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research examines the history of quantification and the authority of mathematical reasoning within economic, political, and public life.

DIFFERENT MEETING TIME FOR NOVEMBER 2026!

Joint Session with the Computing History Working Group

Thursday, November 12, 2026, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm CST

Danielle Wallner presents a chapter from her dissertation Computing at the Periphery: Novosibirsk and the Development of Computer Science, 1960–1991

Please see the draft chapter, below.

Andrés Salas

Katharine Whitman presents The History, Identification and Preservation of Photographs on Glass 

Katharine is a photograph conservator at the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, Canada is writing a Getty Conservation Institute book! 

Peter Murray Jones, ‘Remedy books and religious houses in England in the later Middle Ages’ 

Meeting to be rescheduled due to holiday

Dilip K Das, "Configuring Spaces of Contagion."

Topic: History of Astronomy and Exobiology as a guide for understanding scientific discovery (and disappointments)

Closing ceremony and final reflections.

Conveners of the group.

Cristián Simonetti, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, paper title TBA

Teaching Methods Using Collections and Their Ecologies

(more info soon)

Maria Zarifi, "Epidemic Environments: Air, Uncertainty, and State Power on the Greek Island of Poros, 1837"

Kyle Olson, Washington University in St. Louis

"Curriculum Design for Collections-Based Research Training"

TEACHING

In conversation with Fritz Davis (Purdue) and Stephen Weldon (Oklahoma).

Seminar with Dorit Brixius (Dresden University of Technology) on "Crafting Care: French Noblewomen, Cosmetics, Creativity and Knowledge Exchange in the Grand Siècle".

John Henderson (Birkbeck, University of London) Patience, Dedication and Hard Work: Nurses and the Care of the Sick Poor in Early Modern Italian Hospitals

Guest expert: Rocco Gaudenzi. 
Reading: Modern Physics and Philosophy East and West: Nishida, Bohr, Yukawa