Working Groups

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

Meeting Topic:  "Chemistry, Commerce and Cobalt Blue" Discussion of a work-in-progress
                         Author: Charlotte Abney Salomon
                         Commentator: Ernst Homburg, Professor Emeritus, Maastricht University.

Nuance: Lydia Pyne on ochres

Meeting Organizer: Sarah

Museums of Computing: Stewardship of Digital Heritage 

Peter Krapp will be presenting his new book Museums of Computing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) with a focus on Chapter 7 "Dead Media." It will be followed by a commentary, and then general discussion and Q&A.

Required reading: Chapter 7. 

NEW BOOKS IN CONVERSATION

Lan Li (JHU) on Body Maps
and
Holly Fletcher (UCL) on Body Size in Early Modern Germany

Cecilia Slane (University of Oklahoma), “Fertilizer and Fuel: Scientific Explorations of Peat in the 19thCentury United States”

Preindustrial mining in highland southwest China and Southeast Asia: A field-based approach

Nanny Kim (University of Cologne)

Mystical and other alterations in sense of self: an expanded framework for studying nonordinary experiences

A conversation with Ann Taves, Professor Emerita of Religious Studies, UCSB

NOTE SPECIAL DATE

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

Morgan Hardy, University of Tennessee, paper title TBA

Speaker: Dr. Maeleigh Tidd, University of Miami

Title & Description: TBA

E. A. Hunter (University of Chicago), TBA.

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM

TBA

Sathyaraj Venkatesan, "Unequal Burdens: COVID-19, BIPOC Communities, and Graphic Medical Narratives."

Tanya Bakhmetyeva, University of Rochester

"In the name of Stalin: Soviet Scientific Alpinism and the Making of Scientific Authority in the Pamirs, 1928–1934"

Peter Soppelsa, "Where, When, and Why did Rat Proofing Emerge?"

Martin Boden (Université de Liège ULiège- École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS): "Timber exploitation in the territories of present-day Belgium at the start of the Industrial Revolution, between 1750 and 1860"

A conversation with Arielle Saiber, Professor of Italian Studies, Johns Hopkins University

Reading Group! Come discuss Lee-Ann Monk's Attending Madness: At Work in the Australian Colonial Asylum (Rodopi, 2008).

Nuance: TBA

Meeting Topic: "Colors of a Landscape – A Landscape of Colors"
The session explores how we perceive, interpret and describe landscape colors, and how these colors can be applied to built environments.