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 working group, you must have an account on the Consortium website first.

  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.

Thursday, December 3, 2026, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EST

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

Friday, December 4, 2026, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EST

Kyle Olson, Washington University in St. Louis

"Curriculum Design for Collections-Based Research Training"

Monday, December 7, 2026, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EST

TEACHING

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

Monday, December 7, 2026, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EST

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

Tuesday, December 8, 2026, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm EST

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

Wednesday, December 9, 2026, 9:30 - 11:00 am EST

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

Wednesday, December 9, 2026, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EST

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

Friday, December 11, 2026, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm EST

NEW BOOKS IN CONVERSATION

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

Friday, December 11, 2026, 12:30 - 2:00 pm EST

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

Tuesday, December 15, 2026, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EST

Morgan Hardy, University of Tennessee, paper title TBA

Wednesday, December 16, 2026, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EST

Speaker: Dr. Maeleigh Tidd, University of Miami

Title & Description: TBA

Thursday, December 17, 2026, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EST

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

Monday, January 4, 2027, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EST

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM

TBA

Tuesday, January 5, 2027, 8:00 - 9:30 am EST

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

Tuesday, January 5, 2027, 10:00 - 11:30 am EST

Group Share-a-Thon and Resource Roundup

Come prepared to share about what books, articles, or tools you've found helpful and interesting in your research recently.  

Thursday, January 7, 2027, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EST

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

Friday, January 8, 2027, 12:30 - 2:00 pm EST

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"

Tuesday, January 12, 2027, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm EST

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

Wednesday, January 13, 2027, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EST

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

Prof. Elisa Cordero-Jahr, School of Design, Faculty of Architecture and Arts,
Universidad Austral de Chile (UACh), Valdivia, Chile

Tuesday, January 19, 2027, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EST

Ada Ferraresi, DEEPMED project at University of Sevilla, dissertation chapter title TBA

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Connecting Chronologies, Constructing Historical Anthropology: William Jones in Calcutta and his Legitimation of Empire

Eugenia Lean of Columbia University speaking at "Problematizing the Local, in Global Histories of Science" workshop at UPenn. Philadelphia, December 2015. 

Past Groups and Seminars