After a hiatus, Arun Kumar and I are back with new articles in our series on artisan and laborer histories for the Wire! This first piece in the new set considers the working lives of stonemasons!
(Side note, we don’t write the headlines).
100th speaker! 🥳
Come join the S&T in Asia online seminar series @ Harvard for this talk by Michitake Aso on Agent Orange and dioxin knowledge in postwar Vietnam.
🗓 Tue (4/14)
🕥 10:30 am ET
📍 Over Zoom
Register: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia%E2%...
#histstm #envhist #histmed #histsci
Map of land grant universities and their "coverage" of India during "Green Revolution"
Map of land grant universities and their "coverage" of India during "Green Revolution" via Prakash Kumar's new book *A History of India's Green Revolution: Reign of Technocracy* (2025) www.cambridge.org/core/books/h...
My astonishingly brilliant and generous friend @mitrasharafi.bsky.social's magisterial second monograph, "The fear of the False" has been published from @cornellupress.bsky.social. And it is open access. RUN and READ:
library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...
At Penn South Asian Studies, April 1st:
"On Epistemological Change: Śāstra, Vijñāna, and the Categories of Knowledge in Early Twentieth Century North India"
www.southasia.upenn.edu/events/sast-...
At Columbia, March 30th:
When Science Became Vijñāna: Rethinking Categories of Knowledge in the Global History of Science from Early Twentieth Century South Asia
Register here: scienceandsociety.columbia.edu/events/charu...
Friends in NYC and Philly, I'll be speaking about the history of conceptual and epistemological change and changing ideas of science among lay publics in the wake of scientific instruments in colonial South Asia in two talks next week. Please join if you're around.
I will be delivering a talk about my new book, The Future That Was, at Yale University on Thursday, April 9th at 5 PM.
At Harvard, I personally collected the archives of many women of color, including chef & writer Madhur Jaffrey. I will be in conversation w/ Priya Krishna April 16 at Harvard Radcliffe to celebrate the opening of Madhur Jaffrey collections to the public.
www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2026-p...
📢: Our Spring 2026 ASTRA colloquium series "Occult Sciences in South Asia: A Non-Western History" kicks off tomorrow with Fabrizio Speziale's talk "Mahouts’ Secret Language: Human–Elephant Communication in Persianate South Asia"
🔗: www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/event/mahout...
@mpiwg.bsky.social
Grateful to the Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences journal and Melissa Baldwin and Dominik Huenniger for including my reflections on the methods & practices that I used to write my first monograph as part of their new special issue, "Historical Practice," on the many ways to be a historian.
This is such a beautiful two-parter. The eminent Mughal historian Harbans Mukhia on his ancestral village in West Panjab, Pakistan in *Peshawar Review*
I have a new article out (open access!) about what the Archaeological Survey of India was doing in Nepal in the 1960s, with thoughts about the global complexity of post-war archaeological knowledge and the categories we use to understand it: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
#HistSci friends, might someone know where this image is originally from? (Here, on the Nov 1937 cover of the Hindi pop-sci monthly Vigyan.)
In the second installment of our “10 Questions for the Historian of Science,” I interviewed Audrey Truschke about her research, the state of the history of science, and public engagement within broader global debates. www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/feature-stor...
@mpiwg.bsky.social
Does anyone know of scholars currently working on the history of defamation (libel, slander) or more broadly on law and reputation, or even law and honor, in history? Any time, any place.
my book, _Islamic Ethics and Spiritual Sovereignty: Genres of Tradition in Muslim South Asia_, will be published by @undpress.bsky.social in June 2026
i'm going through the proofs, and don't see any typos in the epilogue, so sharing this 3-page essay here
undpress.nd.edu/978026821090...
The 19th Ischia Summer School in the History of the Life Sciences will take place 28 Jun - 5 July 2026. Interested graduate students should apply by 27 February. This year's theme? PROBLEMS of GROWTH! ischiasummerschool.org/theme #histSTM #histbio #histsci
Can anyone recommend scholarly work on human rights crimes (mass atrocities) with a forensic science angle? This is for a "jigsaw discussion" in my undergrad History of Forensic Science course. I'm seeking case studies from places other than Poland, Guatemala & Chile #ForensicScience #HumanRights
Experiments in collaborative thought, between science studies and religious studies: tif.ssrc.org/category/sen... #ImmanentFrame #histSTM Edited by the wonderful Mona Oraby
Big exciting news: the Centre for Legal History of India at the Max Planck Institute has now been launched (the first of its kind anywhere) www.lhlt.mpg.de/4712897/01-r... Applications for 3 doctoral positions + a postdoc due: 6 Jan. 2026. Congratulations to head Reeju Ray & everyone else involved!
Title page of proofs of the upcoming Necessary Inventions: Roger Bacon, the Middle Ages, and the Making of Modern Science.
Page proofs of Necessary Inventions: Roger Bacon, the Middle Ages, and the Making of Modern Science. Holy crap, I did it!
I'm very excited to share my new book's cover design: www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501... It is bloodstain-inspired because species-of-origin bloodstain testing is a big part of the story. Out on 15 April 2026 & Open Access as part of the Corpus Juris book series @cornellupress.bsky.social
The Introduction, “What is the Future We Yearn For?,” to my book, *The Future That Was*, is now live and freely available to all on the book’s @princetonupress.bsky.social website
press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
The article I’m writing is about the rise of a commercial lithographic print culture in Pashto, but I also got to check out the oldest Pashto movable type printed book, a copy of the Bible produced by the the Serampore Missionaries in Bengal in 1818. UChicago holds one of the few extant copies.
The cover for my book, The Future That Was, is now live! It features the MacArthur genius artist Shahzia Sikander's Infinite Woman (2021), where earth is surrounded by an infinite series of women marching around the globe who, from afar, become rays of the sun ☀️
press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
Just discovered that Julia Stephens' new book will be out soon! I've been looking forward to this since a UK train conversation with Julia years ago about jewelry in South Asian history: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... @juliasteph
The Focus issue I edited in Isis: "Is Deep History White?" is out. With contributions from Amy Way, Linda Andersson Burnett, Elise K. Burton, Emily Kern, and an Afterword by Alison Bashford
