The Joint Meeting of the European Society for the History of Science/ History of Science Society will be held in-person in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom from July 13-16, 2026.
The HAR News editors are pleased to share a selection of panels that may be of interest to our readers. Other panels, session locations, abstracts, and additional details can be found in the online program and final program pdf.
NOTE: We have done our best to identify all relevant panels listed in the program, but if we have accidentally overlooked your session, please email news@histanthro.org and we will add it to this round-up as soon as possible!
Monday, July 13
What Are Protocols For? Strategies for Knowing More-Than-Humans in History and Science
9:15 to 10:45 am
Participants:
“From Living Turtle to Ancestral Medium: Protocols of Material Handling and Knowledge Keeping in the Shang Oracle Bone Divination,” Peichao Qin, University of Cambridge
“Counting and Co-existing in a coral habitat: Situating conservation dilemmas in the Lakshadweep Islands of India since the 18th century,” Lakshmi Pradeep Rajeswary, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
“The Importance of Protocols: Unlocking the Key to our Scientific Future with our Lakota and Horse Nation Relatives,” Yvette Running Horse Collin, Taku Skan Skan Wasakliyapi, Global Institute for Traditional Sciences (GIFTS)
“The Tales That Turn Upon Turtles,” John Mathew, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Session Organizers: Lakshmi Pradeep Rajeswary, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science; Lisa Onaga, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Chair: Chanelle Adams, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Rewriting the History of Science
9:15 to 10:45 am
Participants:
“A Typology of Presentist Practices in Academic History Hakob Barseghyan,” Victoria College, University of Toronto
“Weaving Contentious Topics into the Grand Narrative of Science in Finland,” Katariina Parhi, University of Oulu
“When Paradigms Meet Ideology: Thomas Kuhn’s Reception in Socialist Czechoslovakia,” Michaela Šmidrkalová, Masaryk Institute and Archives of the CAS
Chair: David Francisco de Moura Penteado, University of São Paulo
Scientific Expeditions and the Co-Production of Knowledge
9:15 to 10:45 am
Participants:
“African Women and Invisibility in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Expeditions: Queens, Guardians and Local Knowledge Holders,” Sara Manuela de Albuquerque, University of Évora | IHC
“Anthropological Expeditions in Twentieth-Century Brazil: Ethnographic Objects and Collections in the Transnational Relations of Science and Museums,” Victor Rafael Limeira-Dasilva, Museu de Astronomia e Ciências Afins (MAST)
“Baconian Buccaneering: William Dampier’s Excursions to Panama, 1679-1685,” Joseph Bienko, The Pennsylvania State University
Chair: Brooke Penaloza-Patzak, University of Vienna
Transcultural Psychiatry and the Sinophone Pacific
9:15 to 10:45 am
Participants:
“Translating East Asian Psyches: Cold War Transculturalists and the Making of Japaneseness and Chineseness across the Pacific,” Alex Hsu-Chun Liu, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
“The Making of Culture-Bound Syndrome in the Post-War Period: Reassessing the Work of Pow Meng Yap,” Windson Lin, University of Groningen
“Politicization Postponed: Political Depression as an Afterlife of Neurasthenia in Contemporary China,” Hsuan-Ying Huang, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
“Koro as a Paradigm in Transcultural Psychiatry,” Howard Chiang, University of California, Santa Barbara
Session Organizer: Howard Chiang, University of California, Santa Barbara
Chair: Ana Antic, University of Copenhagen
Fertility and the Sexed Body: Fluids and Health
9:15 to 10:45 am
Participants:
“Bloody Shifts: Menstruation Management for Free and Unfree Bodies in the Colonial Atlantic World,” Mackenzie Moeller Elmore, University of California, Los Angeles
“Battling ‘Scientific Sins’; Sex, Health and ‘Sexologists’ in Colonial Bengal (1880-1947),” Sohini Mukhopadhyay, University of Illinois at Chicago
“From Moralisation to Prevention: Dutch Doctors and Menopause Advice, 1950-1990,” Hanneke de Boer, University of Groningen
Chair: Kate Mulry, CSUB
Whose Values Count? Political Commitments, Marginal Voices, and the Construction of Scientific Legitimacy
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Epistemic Disobedience and the Making of Physical Chemistry: Reimagining Interdisciplinarity through Gender,” Dimitris Kalogiannis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
“Contra Kilgore: Scientist Autonomy in the 1940s American Political Sphere,” Erik Lynch, Michigan State University
“Competing for Truth: Cold War Rivalry and the Methodological Values of Science,” Konstantinos Papathanasiou, National Kapodistrian University of Athens
“HIV Activism in South Europe: A Historical Case of Epistemic Disobedience,” Antonis Efstratiou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Session Organizer: Maria – Amiridi-Wiedenmayer, National and Kapodistrian University Athens
Chair: Evangelia (Lina) Chordaki
Behavioral Science Beyond the Laboratory: Social Environments, Animal Models, and the Politics of Experimentation
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Fish and Family: Struggles with Congested Aggression In and Beyond the Laboratory,” Cécile Hauser, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich
“Automatic Animals: Behaviourist Psychology, Commercial Animal Training, and the Problem of “Misbehaviour,”” Edmund Ramsden, Queen Mary University of London
Session Organizer: Cécile Hauser, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich
Chair: Jill Morawski
Commentator: Erika Lorraine Milam, Princeton University
Fertility and the Sexed Body: Forms of Control
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Contested Estrogen: Clomid and the Making of Fertility Knowledge in the 1960s,” Chloe Bell-Wilson, UCLA
“From Insidious Disease to Diagnosed Malignancy: Embodied Suffering and the Emergence of Gynaecological Cancer in British India,” Rohini Dasgupta, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Modern Sexual Science and the Politics of Defining Desire and Difference, 1890-1950,” Shrikant Botre, King’s College London
“Ishimoto Shizue & Yamada Waka’s Jinkō Mondai: Population Biopolitics and Birth Control in Early Japanese Women’s Movements,” Iona Leask Fleming, Humboldt University/Free University of Berlin
Chair: Arnav Bhattacharya, Bryn Mawr College
Techniques of Observation and Experiment in Psychoanalysis
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Sciences and Techniques of the Dreaming Body in the Twentieth Century,” Andreas Mayer, CNRS
“Exploring Sexual Subjectivities in Twentieth-Century France: Roger Martin du Gard’s Psychosexual Case Studies,” Gire François, EHESS
“Daydreaming and Reverie: Experiment and Self-observation in Twentieth-century Psychoanalysis,” Callard Felicity, University of Glasgow
Session Organizer: Andreas Mayer, CNRS
Chair: Andreas Mayer, CNRS
Histories of Science and the University 20 Years after William Clark’s Academic Charisma Roundtable
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Session Organizers: Alix Cooper, SUNY-Stony Brook; Michael Banerjee, UC Berkeley
Chair: Alix Cooper, SUNY-Stony Brook
Participants:
Jan Golinski, University of New Hampshire
Michael Hagner, ETH Zurich
Peter Becker, University of Vienna
Alix Cooper, SUNY-Stony Brook
Michael Banerjee, UC Berkeley
Genealogy & Inheritance between Passion, Law, and Science, I
2:30 pm to 4:00 pm
Participants:
“Divine Institutions: Genealogical Thinking and Social Organization in Ancient Greece,” Calloway Scott, University of Cincinnati
“Apologies to Sahlins: Aristotle and the Anthropology of Kinship,” Malina Buturovic
“Systems of quantifying kinship and descent in Western Europe, ca. 1100 and 1600,” Simon Teuscher, University of Zurich
“Affinity: A Genealogical Metaphor at the Centre of Eighteenth-Century Sciences,” Staffan Mueller-WIlle, Cambridge University
Session Organizers: Mackenzie Anne Cooley, Hamilton College; Markus Friedrich, Universität Hamburg
Chair: Kassandra Miller, Colby College
Classifying Nature, Reordering East Asia: Science and Identity in Postwar Japan and South Korea
2:30 pm to 4:00 pm
Participants:
“Where Typhoid Becomes Virulent”: Yoshio Aoki’s Bacterial Geography and the Reordering of Asia,” Kyoryen Hwang, Seoul National University
“Transnational Non-Western Methods: Russian and Japanese Re-Centering of World History through Crop Origins,” Kaori Iida, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI
“Social Construction of “Baekdudaegan,”” Taeho Kim, Jeonbuk National University
Session Organizer: Jaehwan Hyun, Pusan National University
Chair: Fa-ti Fan, Binghamton University
Commentator: Ruselle Meade, Cardiff University
Cybernetic Anthropologies: Midcentury Redesigns of a Technomodern Field
2:30 pm to 4:00 pm
Participants:
“Beyond High-Level Linguistic Abstractions: Margaret Mead, Language, and the Affordances of Cybernetics,” Bethany Anderson, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
“How to Interpret a Control-Mechanism: Metaphors, Cybernetics, and Clifford Geertz,” Matteo Bortolini, University of Padova
“RAND’s Linguistic Drive: Computerizing Anthropology in 1960s Chiapas,” Matthew Watson, Mount Holyoke College
Chair: Matthew Watson, Mount Holyoke College
Hidden Legacies of Slavery and Freedom in the History of Science
2:30 pm to 4:00 pm
Participants:
“Charles Lyell’s Principles of Reform: Reconstructing Lyell’s Early Intellectual Development 1816-1833,” Felicity MacKenzie, University of Edinburgh
“Contested Categories: Disability, Enslavement, and the Making of Census Knowledge in the Antebellum United States,” Brayden J Rothe, University of Minnesota
“Meanings and Measures of Skin Color: Eugenics, Race, and the Legacy of Slavery,” Rana Asali Hogarth, University of Pennsylvania
“Harold “Doc” Edgerton Invites “Seeing the Unseen”: From Milk Drop’s Coronet to MIT’s Formerly Enslaved Janitor,” Elizabeth Cavicchi, Edgerton Center MIT; Jia-Yi Andrea Lim,
National University of Singapore; Audrey Tao, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Nikki Yip, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Chair: Jacob Myers, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
The Late Ian Hacking’s Legacy for the History of Science: Reasoning, Kinds, Trees of Life
Roundtable
4:15 pm to 5:45 pm
Session Organizers: Gordon McOuat, University of King’s College/Dalhousie University; Emmanuel Delille, Centre Marc Bloch, HU-Berlin
Participants:
Matthew Perkins-McVey, Technion
Matteo Vagelli, Cà Foscari University of Venice
Water Knowledge and Water Experts II
4:15 pm to 5:45 pm
Participants:
““This country work”: Enslaved people’s water knowledges in nineteenth-century,” Berbice Frederick Bricknell, University of Hull
“Contested Waterscapes: Plural Water Knowledge and Environmental Transformation along the Canal del Dique,” Christiane Hoth de Olano
“Troubled waters: encounters between colonial and local hydro-knowledges in French Guiana,” Marquisar Jean-Jacques
“Thirsty cities: upending hierarchies of water knowledge in the colonial Guianas,” Davide
Martino, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
Session Organizers: Davide Martino, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB); Anna-Luna Post, Leiden University
Chair: Claire Stichting Weeda, Leiden University
Genealogy & Inheritance between Passion, Law, and Science, II
4:15 pm to 5:45 pm
Participants:
“Buffon’s Dogs: Breeding, Empire, and the Visualisation of Race,” Jens Amborg,
University of Uppsala; Petter Hellström, Uppsala University
“Art-Historical Origins of Sexual Selection,” Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen, Institute of Fine Arts
““From “the Genealogical Sublime” to “Dead and Deleted”: Digitization and DNA Databanks,” Julia Creet, York University
Session Organizers: Markus Friedrich, Universität Hamburg
Mackenzie Anne Cooley, Hamilton College
Chair: Mackenzie Anne Cooley, Hamilton College
Contested Bodies: Science and Statecraft in 20th-Century China and Taiwan
4:15 pm to 5:45 pm
Participants:
“Sovereignty on the Body: Forensic Science, Nationalism, and the Politics of Life and Death in Republican China (1911-1948),” Ting-Yu Cai, Duke University
“Against Intensity: Ping Pong, Martial Arts, and the Ideology of Sport in Republican China,” Nathaniel Pigott, University of California, Irvine
“Disciplining Bodies through Disciplining Medicine: Plastic Surgery and Statecraft in 20th-Century US-Taiwan Relations,” Adrien Gau, University of Pennsylvania
Session Organizer: Adrien Gau, University of Pennsylvania
Chair: Jia-Chen Fu, Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica
Tuesday, July 14
Food, Scarcity and Knowledge in Colonial and Atlantic Worlds (1500-1800)
9:15-10:45 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Participants:
““Necessary to human life:” Plants of Castile and food scarcity in the early colonial Spanish Empire,” Antoine Duranton, EHESS, Paris
“L’art de convertir les vivres en pain: Scarcity, Technology and Hybrid Knowledge in the 18th-Century,” Antilles Lavinia Maddaluno, Institut d’Études Avancées, Paris; University of Ca’ Foscari in Venice (Italy)
Session Organizer: Lavinia Maddaluno, Institut d’Études Avancées, Paris; University of Ca’ Foscari in Venice (Italy)
Chair: Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh, University of Amsterdam
Past and Present Indigenous Knowledges and Scientific Authority in the Americas
9:15 am to 10:45 am
Participants:
“Environmental Knowledge and Archaeological Authority at Maya Sites,” Sophie Brockmann, University College London
“Indigenous Knowledge, Technology and the Long History of Plant Transfers,” Deirdre Moore, EUI
“Ring of Fires: Settler Colonialism and Species Invasions in Southern California,” Jeannie Shinozuka, Washington State University
“Indigenous Knowledge and Transitional Justice,” Esteban Londoño
Chair: Sophie Brockmann, University College London
Histories of Biogeography Part 1
9:15 am to 10:45 am
Participants:
“The Speaking Ape: Biogeography, Language and the 19th Century Search for the Cradle of Man,” Emily Kern, University of Chicago
“Co-Producing Science: Local Knowledge and the Amazonian Expeditions of Bates & Wallace,” Anderson Antunes, University of Évora
““Sense and Suitability: Delimiting ‘Temperate’ in Clime and Place,” Brooke Penaloza-Patzak, University of Vienna
““Apples versus Oranges: Debating the Effects of the Ice Age in Civil War America,” Caroline Winterer, Stanford University
Chair: Lisa Onaga, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Museums and the Global History of Science
9:15 am to 10:45 am
Participants:
“Geology as Political Narrative: Soviet Museums and the Making of Scientific Authority,” katarzyna jarosz
“Defining the Korean History of Science at the Science Museum: Critical Reflections on the Historical Narratives,” Yeonsil Kang, National Science Museum of Korea
“Beyond the Myth of the Machine: The Re-integration of Traditional Ecological Knowledge into the Preventive Conservation of Chinese Museum Collections,” Wenzhe Zhang, Tsinghua University
Chair: Aimee Slaughter
Beyond Universalisms and Flat Pluralisms: East Asia as Method for the Global History of Science
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenters:
“Shatter the Mandala!”―the 1985 Tsukuba Science Expo and the Spectacle of Pluralist Dystopia,” Yasuhiro Okazawa, Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University
“Adopting An Epistemic Challenge from the Periphery: The Rise and Fall of North Korea’s “Bonghan Theory” in 1960s–1970s Japan,” Jaehwan Hyun, Hanyang University
“When Takeuchi Yoshimi Meets Michel Foucault: Shōkei Yakuriron, Doctrine of Signatures, and the Bifurcated ‘Practice Turn’ of Early Modern Europe,” Xinyi Wen, Warburg Institute
“Constructing and Contesting the Science-Civilization Nexus in Late Qing China Tianyan Lun (On Heavenly Evolution) and the Debate on the Primacy of Technology over Science,” Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Academia Sinica Taiwan
Session Organizer: Hansun Hsiung, Durham University
Chair: Jung Lee, Ewha Womans University
Scientific Authority and Sacred Domains in the 19th-Century Mediterranean
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenters:
“Maternal Bodies, Moral Theology, and the Medical Defense of Therapeutic Abortion in 19th-Century Catholic Europe,” Jennifer Kosmin, Auburn University
“Death in the Air: Ottoman Medico-Religious Debates Around Burial Practices,” Christin Zurbach, Cedars Sinai – Huntington Library
“The Eucalypti, the Friars and the Nation: How the Catholic Church Aided Reclaiming Land for the Secular Italian Nation State,” Giulia Amoresano, Auburn University
Session Organizer: Jennifer Kosmin, Auburn University
Chair: Jennifer Kosmin, Auburn University
Legitimating Agricultural Risk: Science, Bodies and Knowledge Across Global Farming
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Living with Depletion: Whiteness, Masculinity, and the Making of a Visual Politics of Groundwater,” Sam Hege, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
“Risk Beyond the Model: Multiscale Stories of Agrobiodiversity Loss in the Andes,” Alejandra Osorio Tarazona, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
“Legitimisation of Pesticide Use Through Agro-Adverts on Radio and Television in Kenya,” James Maina Wachira, Tharaka University
“When Bodies Remember What Documents Forget: Agricultural Risk and Epistemic Erasure in El Ejido,” Silvia Pérez-Criado, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Session Organizer: Silvia Pérez-Criado, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Chair: Sam Hege, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Histories and Historiographies of the Human Sciences in the Americas during the Long 1970s
Roundtable
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenters: Robert Hancock, University of Victoria
Sebastián Gil-Riano, University of Pennsylvania
Adrianna Link, American Philosophical Society
Joanna Radin, Yale University
Contested Theories of Body and Mind
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Therapeutic Benefits of Consuming Clay, Between Arab-Islamic Medical Heritage and Modern Scientific Research,” khallaf El Ghalbi, Moulay Ismail University
“Local Actors and Global Sciences: Contextualizing the Making of Modern Mind Sciences in Late-Colonial India,” Pradipto Roy
“Translating Madness: The John G. Kerr Refuge for the Insane and the Co-production of Psychiatric Knowledge in Late Qing Canton,” Yanan Liu, Sun Yat-sen University
Chair:
Alicia Puglionesi, Johns Hopkins University
Ex Oriente & In Orientem Scientia: Entangled Knowledge through the Early Modern Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Transoceanic Itineraries of Knowledge on Distillation and Medical Use of Essential Oils,” Angela Schottenhammer, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
“Evidence of Long-term Medical Knowledge Reconfiguration: Antonio de Barros’s Ý Haọc (1756) Medical Manuscript,” Fabiano bracht, University of São Paulo
“The mariner’s compass in Iberian and Indian Ocean navigation practices: An early comparative history on the magnetic declination,” Inês Bénard, University of Lisbon
“Rutters of the Sun and Rutters of the Moon: Indian and Atlantic Ocean Nautical Principles,” Juan Acevedo, University of Lisbon
Chairs:
Fabiano Bracht, University of São Paulo Juan Acevedo, University of Lisbon
“Facing” the Past: Race, Craniometry, and the Afterlives of Human Skulls
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Educating the Heads: Biological Determinism, Reform, and Race in Ottoman Cranial Sciences,” Baek Kyong Jo, University of Toronto, Canada
“Reconstructing Dante’s Race: Fabio Frassetto and the International Committee for Anthropological Standardization,” Francesco Cassata, University of Genoa, Italy
“Racial Typologies and Twentieth-Century Statistics,” Iris Clever, University of Chicago
“Facing Racial Science: Reflections on the Khoekhoe Woman in Petrus Camper’s Facial Angle,” Paul Wolff Mitchell, University of Leiden
“The Persistence of Race in Forensic Craniofacial Depiction Practices,” Lisette Jong, University of Amsterdam
Session Organizer: Francesco Cassata, University of Genoa, Italy
Chair:
Elise K Burton, University of Toronto
On the Fringe? Constructing and Contesting Boundaries of “Science” in Modern China
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Rendering the Invisible Qi: Xianzhen, Projective Methods, and Hybrid Craft in the Late Qing Inner Court,” Zhaoyi Ma, Nangyang Technological University
“Weather Knowledge between Science and Superstition in Pre-World War II China,” Xinyue Zhang, Yale University
“Good Medicine, Bad Medicine, Weird Medicine: Fighting Shaman Healing with Cooperation between Western and Chinese Medicine,” Yaming You, Duke University
Session Organizer: Yaming You, Duke University
Chair: Bernard Lightman, York University
Beyond Binaries in LGBTQI+ Histories of Sexology: Bi, Trans, Intersex
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“The Conceptual Confusion of Bisexuality in American Sex Science, c.1924–1953,” Robin Franklin, Princeton University
“The Substances of Sex/ology in Egypt and Algeria,” Beshouy Botros, Yale University
“Who Counts as Intersex? Definitional Debates and Intersex Numbers in American Intersex Sexology and Activism,” Matthew Marciello, George Washington University
Session Organizer: Matthew Marciello, George Washington University
Chair: Beans Velocci, University of Pennsylvania
Forum for History of Human Science Business Meeting
Business Meeting
1:00 pm to 2:00 pm
Governing Medicine in the 20thC
2:30 to 4:00 pm
Participants:
“Epistemic Frictions: How the Logic of Law Conquered Medical Discourse in the Treatment of DSD/Intersex,” Alik Mazukatow, Institute for History of Medicine and Science Studies, Luebeck University
“Contours of Contested Sovereignty: Global Health Governance and the Making of Maternal Vaccine Policy in Nigeria Tolulope,” Esther Fadeyi, Centre for the History of Science Technology and Medicine (CHSTM), University of Manchester
“Homogenizing Research Quality: The Transdisciplinary Transit of the Risk of Bias Tool,” Nicole C Nelson, University of Wisconsin Madison
“The Professionalization of Human Reproductive Medicine: The Case of in Vitro Fertilization and Its Extension into Family Diversity,” Natalia Otaduy, UNAM
Chair: Elizabeth Bishop
Exchanged, Marginalized, Lost: Imperial Itineraries of Scientific Objects
2:30 to 4:00 pm
Participants:
“Indigenous Craft and the Art of Taxidermy in Imperial Science: Mateo Sánchez from New Spain to the Royal Cabinet,” Celia Rodriguez Tejuca, Brown University
“Celebrated in Texts, Marginalized in Museums: Rhetoric and Materiality of the Chinese Compass and Sundial,” Shih-Yu Juan, Brown University
“Imperial Exchanges: The 1944 EFEO Gift of Khmer Sculptures and Franco-Japanese Museum Diplomacy in Indochina,” Pin-Hua Chou, University of California, Los Angeles
Session Organizer: Shih-Yu Juan, Brown University
Chair: Lillian Tsay, University of Montreal
Global Perspectives on Science, Technology and Politics
2:30 to 4:00 pm
Participants:
“From Twist to Torsion: Rethinking Empire with Coir Ropework in Nineteenth-Century India,” Adil Mansure, Harvard University
“Making a Socialist Geobody: Embodied Politics and the National Prospecting Movement in Maoist China,” Qile Xie, Durham University
“Solar Photovoltaics as a Contested Geopolitical and Diplomatic Tool in Late 20th-Century,” China Yijun Gai, University of Hong Kong and Southern University of Science and Technology
Chair: Barbara Hof, University of Lausanne
Touching Machines, Remaking Realities: Embodied Encounters between Humans and Technology in Modern China
2:30 to 4:00 pm
Participants:
“From Modeling to Operative Text-Acts: Rethinking Geertz’s Borrowed Metaphor through Chinese Ritual Technologies,” Yang Shen, Department of Sociology, Zhejiang University
“Constructing A Typing Meritocracy in 1940s China,” Miaofeng Yao
“From Disability to Hyperability: Cybernetic Bodies in Early-1960s Mao-Era China,” Ruiying Zhang, Cornell University
“Cybernetic Reformers: Scientizing Policy in Post-Mao China, 1978–84,” Tianyu Fang, Harvard University
Session Organizers: Yuji Xu, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Miaofeng Yao
Chair: Fa-ti Fan, Binghamton University
Commentator: Yuji Xu, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Resource Management, Defined and Redefined
2:30 to 4:00 pm
Participants:
““Proving” a Species: Postcolonial Techno-Forestry, Waste Utilization, and the Making of Rubberwood in Malaysia,” Aida Arosoaie, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Elizabeth Hennessy, University of Wisconsin–Madison
“Bedouin Knowledge and the Foundations of Imperial Extraction in the Late Ottoman Arab Frontiers (1900-1918),” Zeynep Ecem Pulas, The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
“Connecting the World – A Scientific Expedition and the German Exploitation of its Colonies in the Pacific,” Sara Müller, University of Erfurt
“Environmental Knowledge and Nation-Building: Ecology in Mandatory Palestine (1920-1938),” Naomi Yuval-Naeh, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Chair: Nuala Caomhanach, New York University/American Museum of Natural History
Colonialism, Collecting, and Ethnology
2:30 to 4:00 pm
Participants:
“Beyond the Exhibition – Museums as Engines of Epistemic Imperialism, 1850-1920,” Alexander Stoeger, Saarland University
“Colonial Travel Photography Inside a Victorian Asylum,” Aryn Martin, York University
“From Scientific Collections Pasts towards Collections Futures: Decolonizing Knowledge about Colonial Collections in Archaeological Museums,” Elisabete Pereira, Institute of Contemporary History
Chair: Maximilian Georg, Austrian Academy of Sciences
Burying the Torch: Illuminating Diverse Actors in the Making of Premodern Knowledge
2:30 to 4:00 pm
Participants:
“Beyond Obsolescence: The Persistent Plurality of Babylonian Astral Science,” Alessia Pilloni, FU Berlin
“Women in Tech: Mothers and Housekeepers in Premodern Arabic Technical Compendia,” Leonie Böttiger, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
“Aphrodisiac Recipes and Techniques: Rethinking Practical Knowledge of Human Generation among Free and Enslaved Women in the Premodern Islamicate World,” Beatrice Bottomley, The University of Bologna
Session Organizers: Beatrice Bottomley, The University of Bologna; Leonie Böttiger, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Chair: Laurence Totelin, Cardiff University
Scientific Travel in Colonial Contexts: Logistics, Politics and Practices
4:15 pm to 5:45 pm
Participants:
“Pehr Kalm’s Linnaean Ethnography Jordan,” Thomas Mursinna, University of California, Berkeley
“Scientific Exploration Against Slavery? Catineau Laroche’s Expedition and the “White Colonization” Project in Mana (French Guiana, 1820s),” Salomé Ketabi, EHESS, Mondes Américains (Paris)
“Lecturing from the Cape to Cairo: George Darwin and the Dissemination of Knowledge During the BAAS Expedition to Africa in 1905,” Edwin Rose, University of Leeds
“Conservation, Contagion, and Collecting: Guy Shortridge and Nicholas Arends’s Scientific Expeditions to Namibia, 1920s,” Jules Skotnes-Brown, University of Liverpool
Session Organizer: Edwin Rose, University of Leeds
Chair: Janet Browne, Harvard
Collecting Amazonian Knowledges
4:15 pm to 5:45 pm
Participants:
“Recentering Indigenous Epistemologies: Entangled Knowledge Production in Early Modern Colonial Brazil,” Gisele Cristina Da Conceição, University of São Paulo
“Out of Amazonia: Museums, Collections, and Object-Oriented Ontologies,” Neil Safier, Brown University
Chair: Staffan Mueller-WIlle, Cambridge University
Observed: Science and the British Encounter with China in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
4:15 pm to 5:45 pm
Participants:
“Science and Sinology at the Colonial Frontier: The Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1847-1859,” Bernard Lightman, York University
“Translating Power: John Fryer and the Making of Scientific Authority in the Self-Strengthening,” Era Su Huai, York Univeristy
“Translating Natural History: Arthur de Carle Sowerby and the Sinicization of British Zoology in Republican China,” Christine Yi Lai Luk, Tsinghua University
“Evolution and Utopia: Joseph Needham and H. G. Wells on the New World Order, 1940-1942,” Hsiang-Fu Huang, Nankai University
Session Organizer: Hsiang-Fu Huang, Nankai University
Chair: Bernard Lightman, York University
Wednesday, July 15
Histories of Archaeology 1
9:15 am to 10:45 am
Participants:
“Depth of Field: How Excavation Became Science among Victorian Biblical Archaeologists,” Faridah Laffan, Cornell University
“A Name for Things: Terminologies, Debates and Retrospective Narratives on the Question of the Transition between the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic in French Metropolitan Prehistory (1870-1890),” Caroline Bousquet, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (France)
“The History of Archaeology on the Margins: Knowledge-Making and Boundary Objects in Fin-de-Siècle Europe,” Anna Charlotta Gustavsson, Gothenburg University
“The “Istrian Society of Archaeology and Homeland History”, 1884-1920s: Nationalist or Transnational Science?,” Maximilian Georg, Austrian Academy of Sciences
Chair: Suzanne Moon, University of Oklahoma
Collection Stories and Indo-Pacific worlds
9:15 am to 10:45 am
Participants:
“Shifting Empires, Changing Landscapes, and a “Dragnet” Collection of Malaysian Viral Worlds, 1940s to 1970s,” Jack Greatrex, Singapore Management University
“Where Land and Sea Meets: Imperial Science and the Making of a Zamboanga Environment, 1792–1888,” Felice Noelle Rodriguez, Universidad de Zamboanga
“Entangled Organisms: Classificatory Challenges and Ecological Objects in Natural History Collections,” Elaine Ayers, Yale University
“Lost Cylinders: Sound Recording, Physical Anthropology, and Ethnozoology in the Malay Peninsula, c. 1900,” Katherine Enright, University of Cambridge, University Museum of Zoology, Pacific Circle
Session Organizer: Anthony D. Medrano, Brown University
Chair: Janet Browne, Harvard
Rewiring Humans 1: Biology, Psychotherapy, and Philosophy in the Age of Digital Computers
9:15 am to 10:45 am
Participants:
“Like a magnifying glass collecting rays of light”: The first “International Conference on Information Processing” in Paris, 1959,” Ulf Hashagen, Deutsches Museum
“A Science-Historical Analysis of the Development and Transformation of “Cybernetic Creatures”, 1951–1980,” Jeannine Honig, Technical University of Darmstadt
“Feline Organisms, Digital Computers and the Human: Cybernetics and the included Excluded,” Dinah Pfau, Deutsches Museum
“Control and Communication in Living Cells. Engelbert Broda, biocybernetics and science communication,” Helen Piel
Chairs: Magnus Rust, University of Basel Rudolf Seising, Deutsches Museum
Andean Sciences Untranslated
9:15 am to 10:45 am
Participants:
“Geographical knowledge and the more-than-human lived landscapes of Huarochirí, late-16th-century Peru,” Bruno Stori, Pennsylvania State University
“Peru Writes to London: Andean Epistemes and the Making of a Transatlantic Science of the Dead,” Christopher Heaney, Pennsylvania State University
“Natural History in Translation: Alcide d’Orbigny and Bolivia’s First International Students in France, 1833,” Marcia Stephenson, Purdue University
“Horseshoes in Science: The Role of Equine Veterinary in the Configuration of Scientific Thought in the Andes,” Laura Helena Arraya Pareja, FLACSO ECUADOR
Chair: Christopher Heaney, Pennsylvania State University
Science and Empire in the Anthropocene: Towards an Environmental Shift 2 – Making Imperial Worlds
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Landscapes of Difference: Natural History and the Shaping of Colonial Stereotypes,” Catarina Simões, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
“Cotton, Botany and Empire: Tracing botanical sciences in the archive of the first industrial city,” Arianna Tozzi
“Collecting the empire. Natural history collections as committed colonial practice,” Catarina Marques Madruga, Technische Universität Berlin
“Empires of time and weather in Brazil: keeping time, predicting weather, and being contested by the public,” Sabina Ferreira Alexandre Luz
“Plantations reconfigured: from empire’s monocrop to contemporary pop-up polytunnels,” Cristiana Bastos, Universidade de Lisboa
Session Organizers: Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva, King’s College London; Sabina Ferreira Alexandre Luz
Chair: Anderson Antunes, University of Évora
Histories of Archaeology 2
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Metaphor and Method in Colonial Archaeology,” Felix Lüttge, German Historical Institute London
“Clash of Communist and Culture-Historical Archaeologists’ History of Humans,” Kate Mower, University of Utah
“The Epistemic Life of a Tooth: Excavation, War, and Deep-Time Claims in Ukraine, 1954-2025,” Chiara di Leone, UCLA; Maksym Rokhmaniiko, Sci-Arc
“Buried in the Past? Radiocarbon and the Chronopolitics of Soviet Archaeology,” Annapaola Passerini, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Chair: Sayori Ghoshal, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Rewiring Humans 2: Biology, Psychotherapy, and Philosophy in the Age of Digital Computers
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Cybernetician Gordon Pask and His Conversation Theory & Interaction of Actor’s Theory As Critique of Artificial Intelligence,” Marcus J. Carney
“Not So Automated Psychotherapy. Psycho-Scientists Test Computers in the 1960s,” Magnus Rust, University of Basel
“Artificial Intelligence Philosophy: From Kenneth Sayre’s Mental Simulation To Leo Breiman’s Algorithmic Modeling,” Rudolf Seising, Deutsches Museum
Chairs: Magnus Rust, University of Basel Rudolf Seising, Deutsches Museum
Physiometry: Contesting the Arts of Bodily Measurement from Phrenology to Dermatoglyphics
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“The Arts of Measurement in George Combe’s Correspondence Richard Oosterhoff, University of Edinburgh Craniometry and the Construction of Anti-Popular Racial Science in Victorian Britain,” Elise Smith, University of Warwick
“Dermatoglyphics in the Twentieth Century,” Michelle Bootcov, University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia
Session Organizers: Rene Winkler; Richard Oosterhoff, University of Edinburgh
Chair & Commentator: Alison Bashford, University of New South Wales
Science and Empire in the Anthropocene: Towards an Environmental Shift 3 – (Post)-Imperial Ecologies
2:30 to 4:00 pm
Participants:
“The Imperial Epistemology of Fraser Darling’s ‘Ecological Reconnaissance,’” Lawrence Dritsas, University of Edinburgh
“Between internal imperialism and post-imperial crossroads: Rethinking disease ecology within Brazilian rural communities (1920-1950),” Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva, King’s College London
“A Mauritanian Anademic: Pasteurian Science in the Search of Sylvatic Plague at the (Post)Imperial Frontier,” Christos Lynteris, University of St Andrews
“Transnational Biopolitics in Laboratories: Animals and Humans at Risk,” Deyanira Cuanal Cano, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Cuajimalpa
Session Organizers: Sabina Ferreira Alexandre Luz Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva, King’s College London
Chair: Jules Skotnes-Brown, University of Liverpool
Knowable and Unknowable Nature
2:30 to 4:00 pm
Participants:
“The Science of Sea Serpents in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” Peder Roberts, University of Oslo
“Back to the (Amphibious) Future: Axolotl Potentialities between Mexican Science Fiction and Indigenous Storytelling,” Iris Montero, Brown University
“Beavers and Social Progress: Exploring the Relationship between 19th-Century Natural Science and Ethnography,” Sam Vydulinska, Northumbria University
“The House of Daedalus: Worldbuilding with Animals and Automata in Late Medieval Theme Parks,” Sven Gins, University of Groningen
Chair: Sophie Brockmann, University College London
Global Knowledge(s): From Mono- to Plurilingual Research at the Intersection of Digital Humanities/AI, Language Corpora, and the Making of Scientific Knowledge
2:30 to 4:00 pm
Participants:
“Encoding Equivalence: The CUNEI Form Project and Ancient Bilingual Lexica,” Klaus Wagensonner
“Rejoining Voices: Multilingual and Multimodal Challenges in Chinese Bamboo-Slip Databases,” Yiwen Chen, Northwest University
“The Language of Materia Medica: Translating Knowledge in Plurilingual Infrastructures Bencao Corpora,” Michael Stanley-Baker
“Words, Numbers, and Symbols: Vernacular Arithmetic and the Digital Turn,” Michaela Wiesinger
Session Organizer: Yiwen Chen, Northwest University
Chair: Dagmar Schaefer, MPIWG
Racialising Humans
4:15 pm to 5:45 pm
Participants:
“On Testing Children: Measuring Bodies, Minds and the East “African personality,”” Pokuaa Oduro-Bonsrah
“From Racial Hypotheses to the History of East Africa: Insights into European Practises of Colonial Knowledge Production,” Lena Filzen, University of Wuppertal
Chair: Cécile Hauser, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich
Problematising Colonial Instructions: The Global Context of Scientific and Medical Information, 1650-1850
4:15 pm to 5:45 pm
Participants:
“Portable Practices: Linnaean Instructions and Colonial Fieldwork,” Linda Andersson Burnett, University of Uppsala
“Public Instructions, Colonial Distances: Prize Questions in the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences (c. 1770-1800),” Maria Iulia Florutau, Cambridge University
“‘Designed for the Disordered Negroes’: Yaws Management Experiments in the Age of Abolition,” Katherine Paugh, Oxford University
“The Bureaucracy of Bias: Epidemiology and William Fergusson’s Statistical Re-Interpretation of Government Instructions in Sierra Leone,” Matthew Eddy, Durham University
Chair: Anita Guerrini, Oregon State University, and University of California Santa Barbara
Thursday, July 16
Pluralism and the Human Sciences in Imperial and Postcolonial Contexts
9:15 am to 10:45 am
Participants:
“The Legal Surveying Movement: Capturing Indigenous Law in German Pacific Imperialism,” Anna Echterhölter, University of Vienna
“Pluralism, Communication, and Resistance at the Center for Applied Linguistics,” Judith Kaplan, Science History Institute
“Haunted by the Nation: Humanities in Postcolonial India, c. 1947–1984,” Projit Bihari Mukharji, Ashoka University
“Airwaves of Dissent: Pluralizing Knowledge on West African Radio, 1955–1962,” Viktoria Tkaczyk, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Session Organizer: Anna Echterhölter, University of Vienna
Chair: Anke te Heesen, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Dividing Nature: Classification and its Discontents
9:15 am to 10:45 am
Participants:
“Natural Object or Cultural Artifact?: Comparative Methods and Alternative Approaches to Language in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Kristine Palmieri, Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich
“Classifying the Unclassifiable: Epidemiological Knowledge Making on Ethnicity in a Swedish Context, 1950-2020,” Ida Al Fakir, Swedish School of Sports and Health Sciences
“Internationalizing Hungarian Szikes Soils,” Noémi Ujházy, University of Nottingham
“Local Names, Global Science: The Importance of Vernacular Plant Names before Universal Nomenclature,” Madeline Elizabeth White, Northwestern University
Chair: Catarina Marques Madruga, Technische Universität Berlin
Re)thinking Histories of Disease in the “Tropics” (I)
9:15 am to 10:45 am
Participants:
“Socialist Tropical Medicine: Securing the Nation in ‘Fortress Europe’ in the Late Cold War,” Bogdan Cristian Iacob, “Nicolae Iorga” Institute of History (Romanian Academy); Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies (Austrian Academy)
“Trachoma’s tropicalization: Race and epidemiology in the Chinese Labour Corps,” Mary Augusta Brazelton, University of Cambridge
“A ‘non-neglected disease’: Tanzania and schistosomiasis (1961-1980),” Gisela Mateos, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Session Organizers: Edna Suárez-Díaz, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; Timothy Sim, University of Cambridge; Marek Robert Eby, University of Leeds
Archaeological Decipherment: Discovery, Conviction, Allure
9:15 am to 10:45 am
Participants:
“The Question of Authority in the Study of Ancient Egyptian Mathematics,” Christopher Hollings, University of Oxford
“Broken Language: Fractures and Misrecognitions of Maya Sculptural Glyphs,” Charlotte Williams, University of California, Berkeley
“Attempts to Decipher Ancient Mexican Codices in Austria (1910–1945),” Peter Rohrbacher, Austrian Academy of Sciences
“Drawing Conclusions: Inca Quipu Diagrams and a Discredited Decipherment in 1920s Gothenburg,” Manuel Medrano, Harvard University
Session Organizer:
Manuel Medrano, Harvard University
Chair: Manuel Medrano, Harvard University
What Do Museums Do with Collections of Human Remains?
Roundtable
9:15 am to 10:45 am
Participants:
Erin McLeary
Sara Ray, Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
Malcolm MacCallum, University of Edinburgh Laurens de Rooy, Amsterdam UMC
Session Organizer: Trevor M Engel, University of Texas Medical Branch
Chair: Trevor M Engel, University of Texas Medical Branch
Colonial Legacies, Infrastructural Entanglements: Cosmic Infrastructures in Hawai’i, California, and South Africa
2:30 to 4:00 pm
Participants:
“Colonial and Social History as Dark Matter: Building Giant Telescopes on Hawai’i’s Most Revered Mountain (1960s-Present Day),” Pascal Marichalar
“Settler Colonial Infrastructures: Tracking Space from Apartheid South Africa,” Asif Siddiqi, Fordham University
“Infrastructural Adjacencies: Chumash Histories, Archaeology, and SpaceX Operations at the Vandenberg Space Force Base,” Lisa Parks; Sophia Abbey
Session Organizer: Asif Siddiqi, Fordham University
Chair: James Schwoch
Technologies of Colonial Resource Extraction in Africa
4:15 pm to 5:45 pm
Participants:
“Visualization and Commodification: Making the Map and the Mine in French Protectorate Morocco (1912-1960),” Sunny Chen, University of California, Los Angeles
“Seeing Through Stone: Hydrological and Geological Engineering in the Enugu Coalfields,” Uzoamaka Nwachukwu, Indiana University Bloomington, Max Planck Institute
“Technologies of Invisibility: X-Ray Photography and Contested Injuries in Colonial Tunisia’s Phosphate Mines (1920s-1930s),” Rebecca Gruskin, Hamilton University
“From Colonial Advice to Command: Politics of Forest Conservation in Concession Areas on the Gold Coast, 1919-1940,” Daniel Mensah, Brown University
Chair: Sunny Chen, University of California, Los Angeles
Sciences and the Ideas of Europe: Geographies, Temporalities and Actors
4:15 pm to 5:45 pm
Participants:
“Science and Europe’s Others: Robert Merton and Michael Polanyi on the Place of Authoritarianism,” Geert Somsen, Maastricht University
“Science for Europe: CERN and the conceptual construction of European scientific cooperation,” Luca Forgiarini
“Local Informants and “Eastern European” Knowledge Networks in Gessner’s Publications on the Elk,” Christina Anne Stackpole, University of Warsaw
Session Organizers: Luca Forgiarini; Kostas Tampakis, National Hellenic Research Foundation
Chair: Kostas Tampakis, National Hellenic Research Foundation
Contested Science (and Technology Studies): Histories of STS and Its Forerunners, Interlocutors, Competitors, Targets, and Patrons
4:15 pm to 5:45 pm
Participants:
“The Foundations of STS: Oil, Energy, and Philanthropy in the Early Institutionalization of US Science Studies,” Cyrus C. M. Mody, Maastricht University
“From Politics to Academics: Political Activism and the Emergence of STS in South Korea,” Marianne Noel, LISIS (CNRS, INRAE, Université Gustave Eiffel)
“STS in the GDR: Application, Creativity and the Reunification Friedrich Cain,” University of Vienna
“A wave into the field: questioning science from within as women in the 1960s and 1970s,” Paola Altomonte, Maastricht University
Session Organizer: Cyrus C. M. Mody, Maastricht University
Chair: Evangelia (Lina) Chordaki
New Approaches in the History of Science
4:15 pm to 5:45 pm
Participants:
““To Collect, Promote, and Represent”: Tropical Agriculture Between Cameroon and Palestine, 1890s-1930s,” Mona Bieling, HSU Hamburg
“Invasion thinking and the Modern Synthesis: Waddington, Externalism, and the Genetics of Colonizing Species,” Eric Burns Anderson, University of Pittsburgh
Chair: Marjan Wardaki
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