Monday July 7th, 2025, 9:20am to 5:30pm
Barclay Theatre, Tūhura Otago Museum
Details and RSVP: https://otagomuseum.nz/whats-on/pounamu-and-the-history-of-knowledge
Pounamu, also known as “greenstone” and “New Zealand jade,” stands as a cornerstone in the narrative of Aotearoa New Zealand, embodying the essence of the land and the people. This is reflected in the indigenous name for the South Island, Te Waipounamu, which means “place of pounamu” or “waters of pounamu.”
Since its initial discovery post-Polynesian settlement, pounamu has been bound up with key episodes in Aotearoa’s history, from trade networks and technological adaptation in the pre-colonial period through to the Ngāi Tahu Treaty Settlement in 1998.
Along the way, pounamu has encountered many different knowledge traditions. The traditions of Kāi Tahu and other iwi Māori are the most important of these, but the stone has also been studied outside Aotearoa and by non-Māori New Zealanders, through the lens of many different disciplines: pūkōrero (traditional histories), whakairo (carving), physics, gemmology, museology, and more.
Pounamu is a window onto the historical relationship between these traditions, and onto the wider questions they raise. How does Western science interweave with Mātauraka Māori (Māori knowledge)? How do the natural sciences relate to the humanities? What effect did colonisation have on the study of pounamu, and what pathways exist to rectify and reconcile these legacies? What does the future hold for pounamu knowledge? The session will address these questions and explore how the study of pounamu can flourish using different ways of knowing.
2025 AAHPSSS Conference CfP
Submissions are now open and are due by August 8th. Abstracts can be submitted here.
We are pleased to announce that the 2025 conference of the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (AAHPSSS) will be held in a hybrid format at the University of Queensland from Wednesday 3rd December to Friday 5th December.
The signature event for the conference will be the annual Dyason Lecture, presented in 2025 by Professor Peter Harrison (University of Queensland/University of Notre Dame). Other highlights will include keynote presentations from speakers across the range of HPS disciplines, special events for postgrads and early career academics, and other organised workshops. As usual, we will award the Langham Prize for the best presentation by a postgraduate student.
We invite participation from scholars working in any area related to the history, philosophy and social studies of science, medicine or technology (including science and technology studies, sociology of health, environmental humanities, science communication, science policy, and metascience). We will be accepting submissions for:
- Full papers (20 minutes) – to be allocated to sessions
- Short presentations (10 minutes) – to be allocated to sessions
- Organised sessions (90 minutes) – format and presenters arranged by organisers
Early-career academics, research students and scholars from historically underrepresented or disadvantaged groups, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, women, people with disabilities, and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are encouraged to apply. Bursaries will be available for postgrads and insecurely-employed academics who reside outside south-east Queensland to attend in-person.
Join AAPHSSS here.
Please send any questions, suggestions or feedback to mail@aahpsss.net.au.
2024 Dyason Lecture – Professor Alison Bashford (UNSW)
We are pleased to announce that the 2024 Dyason Lecture is set to be given by Professor Alison Bashford on Wednesday, December 4th at 6.30pm at the Forum Theatre at the University of Melbourne. The title of the lecture is Secrets Disclosed: Reading the Hand from Chiromancy to Genetics.
Speaker: Professor Alison Bashford (UNSW)
Title: Secrets Disclosed: Reading the Hand from Chiromancy to Genetics
When: 6:30pm, Wednesday 4th December
Where: Forum Theatre, Arts West, The University of Melbourne
Further details and abstract to follow.
Speaker Bio:
Alison Bashford is Scientia Professor in History and Director of the Laureate Centre for History & Population at UNSW Sydney. She also directs the New Earth Histories Research Program. Her work connects the history of science, global history, and environmental history into new assessments of the modern world, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Her most recent book is An Intimate History of Evolution: The Story of the Huxley Family (Random House, 2022), winner of the Nib Literary Prize, an Economist Best Book of 2022, and shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize, 2023. Before taking up her Research Chair at UNSW, Alison Bashford was the Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge, Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. She is Fellow of the British Academy and of the Australian Academy of Humanities. Secrets Disclosed: The Hand from Chiromancy to Genetics is her next book (Chicago, 2025).
Featured image credits
Richard Saunders, Palmistry, the secrets thereof disclosed…
(London, 1663).
Plate prepared for L.S. Penrose, “Finger-prints, palms and chromosomes,” Nature (1963)
Vale Dr Natalie Köhle
We are sad to announce that Dr Natalie Köhle passed away on Monday morning. Natalie was a historian of Chinese medicine, interested in the transcultural history of bodily fluids and in the history of Chinese materia medica. Her co-authored book Fluid Matter(s): Flow and Transformation in the History of the Body was published by ANU Press in 2020. She received a MA and PhD degrees from Harvard University and a BA Hons. degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. She was located at the University of Sydney within the School of History and Philosophy of Science for a relatively short time but is remembered as a generous, kind and deeply scholarly colleague. In 2023 AAHPSSS welcomed Natalie to present one of our plenary sessions at the AAHPSSS Conference.
We send our deepest condolences to her family, friends and close colleagues at this difficult time.
Public Lecture – Somatic Affinities: Medicine and Portraiture
Members in Melbourne may be interested in this upcoming seminar presented by Visiting Professor Ludmilla Jordanova, Emeritus Professor of History and Visual Culture at Durham University, UK, and hosted by the University of Melbourne.
When? Tuesday, June 11, 6PM
Abstract: The popularity of portraiture, especially in the English-speaking world, is well known. That medical practitioners were keen on portraits is also a familiar claim.
In this talk Professor Ludmilla Jordanova will explore the affinities between medicine and portraiture by reflecting on the notion of ‘somatic affinity’ and on the ways in which health care professionals necessarily have to make careful visual appraisals all the time.
Since ‘portrait’ is a powerful metaphor, we might say they are in the business of generating portraits. We might also plausibly claim that those who produce portraits in the literal sense are doing something that is quasi-medical. There’s a wealth of contemporary material that can be put to use here, but there is also a golden opportunity for historical research capable of making a useful contribution to the medical humanities.
For more information and tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/somatic-affinities-medicine-and-portraiture-tickets-902061318687
Registration for the 2023 Conference is now open
The registration for the conference is now available. Select the Conference button to see what is currently known, and select the Register button to go directly to registration.
A new collection of Darwiniana online
John van Wyhe has notified us of the above:
… you might be interested in a wonderful collection of Darwiniana focused on Darwin’s life and the 1909 Darwin celebrations in Cambridge – 440 colour images in all. The J.C. Simpson Collection at the Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University seems to be little known but is full of treasures.
There are letters from all of Darwin’s sons, as well as the little-known daughter ‘Bessie’, J. D. Hooker, a postcard from Ernst Haeckel, a note from A. R. Wallace which makes a very casual reference to his 1858 Ternate essay manuscript, a manuscript leaf of Darwin’s Insectivorous plants (1875) and personal cheques signed by Darwin and Emma Darwin. There is a letter offering a photograph of Darwin that the Darwin family had never seen before. And there is the stuffed monkey that was suspended over Darwin’s head when he was given his honorary law degree at Cambridge in 1877.
This is integrated with the rest of the manuscripts in Darwin Online – by
far the largest collection online and nearing the goal of complete transcription of the Darwin Archive in Cambridge. If you have not visited for a while, have a look.
Final call for papers for Conference 2023
This is a final reminder that the extended deadline for submission for the 2023 AAHPSSS conference is next Monday, 28 August. Thank you to all of you have already submitted, and please do consider contributing a paper or organising a full session if you have not yet done so. If you would like to contribute to the AAHPSSS conference other than through a paper or session, please contact us directly with your ideas.
We are still finalising our catering options for the conference and so have not yet determined our registration fee. At this stage we anticipate that the costs will be around $250 for full members for the three days and $175 for concessional members, with corresponding rates for single day attendance and non-members. We will have these costs determined and registrations open within two weeks’ time, when we will also notify speakers of acceptance.
Another reminder that AAHPSSS members who are postgraduate students or scholars in insecure employment and who reside outside the greater Sydney area will be entitled to apply for a bursary to assist with travel costs to the conference.
The Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHASS), which AAHPSSS is participating in, has arranged for discounted rates at a range of hotels in Sydney in the week in which the CHASS conferences, including AAHPSSS are taking place. You can view these deals through this page: https://www.conferencenational.com.au/cofhass-2023