The section explores disciplinary frameworks to the study of the 'everyday,' and provides a set of models that expand our notions of where the everyday is located and how it is studied in anthropological, historical, and religious studies approaches to Islam in South Asia. Introduction is here:

New special section of CSSAME on "Methodologies of the 'Everyday' in South Asian Islam" co-edited by Harini Kumar and me is now out! Featuring articles from Mudit Trivedi, Ali Altaf Mian, Elizabeth Lhost & Taushif Kara, Harini and me, with a post-script by Shahzad Bashir. Check it out here!

I’ve been an immigrant for over 25 years now in the US, the UK, Australia, Germany and now Canada and I’ve been very privileged to be able to live and study and work here but i was just thinking how a not insignificant bit of that time was spent crying in buses, trains, planes and airports

TWO great jobs in History and Philosophy of Science at Sydney! Rank from Lecturer (Assistant Prof) to Assoc Prof. Particularly interested in candidates working in the areas of early modern science, or science or medicine in Asia, or Indigenous knowledge systems... #HPS #STS #histstm #histsci

Our 30th Rausing Lecture takes place on 4 June. Join Dr Stephanie Dick from Simon Fraser University, at St John's College, Cambridge, to hear her discuss 'Looking for Intelligence in Minds, Machines and Mathematics'. 📆4 June 2026 🕞15:30-17:00 Book your place: www.hps.cam.ac.uk/news-events/...

Our department is hiring a postdoc to study the educational experiences of Asian immigrants within East and Southeast Asia, and between Asia / Europe, over long time periods. See these links for full details on this EduTrack project www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/pro... www.mpg.de/26445995/one...

Cambridge Department of History and Philosophy of Science are now on Bluesky! 🔭📚 @hpscambridge.bsky.social

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" 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...

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!

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

A new Isis Focus Section asks a bold question: “Is deep history white?”The issue shows how ideas of deep time emerged through European geology, empire, and the dismissal of Indigenous temporal knowledge. Deep history has long carried the imprint of a distinctly white European, extractive worldview.

Launch of Medicine on a Larger Scale: Global Histories of Social Medicine at HoMSEA meeting, Yogyakarta, June 25. Book available open access at www.cambridge.org/core/books/m... Dr Sudirman Nasir, public health, Makassar, launched it with aplomb. With @hanspols.bsky.social & @ahlie.bsky.social & me

Very excited for this event at Cambridge HPS this Friday, co-organised with Mika Hyman, on cross-contextualisation (for more on c-c, see here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....)

I’m thrilled to announce that from September I’ll be joining @warburginstitute.bsky.social as a Frances Yates Long-Term Fellow. It’s a position I’ve aspired to since 2019, when I studied Warburg for an MPhil essay. Can’t wait to meet such an exciting group of scholars!

“If one is to evaluate both the achievements and the defects of twentieth-century academic moral philosophy, it needs to be understood both from within and from a standpoint that is at once external and radically critical.” dailynous.com/2025/05/22/a...

For those in Cambridge and environs, announcement of 29th Annual Hans Rausing Lecture at the Dept of History & Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, June 5, 3:30 pm. #histsci #histech #sts www.hps.cam.ac.uk/news-events/...

Yesterday Prof. Frank Rövekamp (Ludwigshafen University of Applied Sciences) gave an inspiring and lively talk on Shogi, the Japanese cousin of Western chess, in the ASTRA colloquium series "The Ludic Languages of Asia: Sources and Terminologies". 🔗 www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/event/shogi-...

The Soviet spacecraft that came in from the cold (and fell into the Indian Ocean this morning) -- @nytimes.com on Kosmos-482, the lost Soviet Venus probe from 1972 and its legacy. I'm quoted a few times. (Gift article) www.nytimes.com/2025/05/10/s...

Plenary with the authors of an #HistSci classic, and the first time, apparently, that the chair, John Tresch, sees Stephen Shapin and Simon Schaffer in the same room.

Mark your calendars! 📅 I'm thrilled to share the line-up for the fall 2025 Science and Technology in Asia online seminar series. Hope you'll be able to join us for one or more of these sessions! seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia #histstm #histsci #histtech #histmed #sts #envhist #envhum 🧪

Our Visiting HPS Seminar tomorrow is the final one of the academic year! We welcome Dr Charu Singh from the University of Cambridge for “Challenging the Tridosha: Elements, humors and an Ayurvedic controversy in British India, c.1935”. Full details here: hpsleeds.wordpress.com/category/vis... #HPS

Many heatwave experts point out discrepancies in heatwave data because observatories are often located away from urban centres and end up recording lower temperatures, @jeffjosephpaul.bsky.social writes:

Yes! "Fear of the False: Forensic Science and the Law of Crime in Colonial South Asia" looks at false evidence planted by colonized tricksters to frame rivals + falsity enabled by criminal procedure which increased risk of expert misconduct. More details here: salh.law.wisc.edu/forensic-sci...

I'm finishing up a book manuscript for @cornellupress.bsky.social that includes a section on forensic venomology in colonial India. I worked really hard to get over my snake phobia for that! So this caught my eye. Big news to be on verge of a universal antivenom: www.bbc.com/news/article... (1/2)

Meanwhile, we welcome Dr Stavros Ioannidis (online, U. Athens) and Dr Charu Singh (in-person, U. Cambridge) on 30 April and 7 May respectively, for papers in our Visiting Speaker Seminar Series. Details here: hpsleeds.wordpress.com/category/vis... #histsci #histSTM #hps @leedsprhs.bsky.social

🎉 It's Himal's 38th birthday this May 🎂 and we’re looking for 38 new supporters. For just USD 5 per month, you can be one of 38 special people who step up to help secure the future of independent journalism in Southasia. Click here: buff.ly/3NHN6O1

(1/n) My new (edited) book is out! 'Cosmic Fragments: Dislocation and Discontent in the Global Space Age.' Out from @upittpress.bsky.social, the book has 18 scholars weigh in on aspects of space, esp deleterious phenomena, that rarely get foregrounded in celebratory narratives. Most critically..