TERM 3 (APRIL-JUNE)

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29 April 2026 | 15.00-16.30 (Room S8.08​)

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PRE-CIRCULATED PAPER DISCUSSION​

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Medicine, Engineering, and Empire: Colonial and Commonwealth Students at King’s College London, 1920-1970​

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Sarah Limb, Department of History, King's College London

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Abstract      This paper, an extract from the penultimate chapter of my PhD, focuses on colonial and Commonwealth students at King’s College London between 1920 and 1970. The paper tracks the enrolment rates of colonial and Commonwealth students on Medicine and Engineering degrees at King’s and contextualises these against broader disciplinary advances and imperial developments. Various reasons are offered for the increasing or diminishing popularity of Medicine and Engineering among students from specific countries at different points in time, including previous educational opportunities, local contexts and timelines of decolonisation, and restrictions imposed by the King’s administration. Each of these factors are indicative of the changing relationship between Britain and the constituent parts of its empire, particularly as decolonisation progressed after the Second World War. Equally evident are the colonial structures of knowledge production and the position of universities as continuing axes of exchange between the metropole and the (former) empire.

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Sarah Limb is a PhD researcher at the Department of History, King’s College London. Her thesis, Education and Empire: Colonial and Commonwealth Students at King’s College London, 1918-70, looks at the experiences of colonial and Commonwealth students at KCL during the era of decolonization, and examines how these were informed by wider themes of migration, colonialism and decolonisation. Sarah’s thesis sits alongside a broader university project, King’s Past, which examines the university’s colonial history and legacy. Before starting her PhD in 2022, Sarah completed an MA in World History and Cultures at KCL and worked in criminal justice policy and research.

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If you would like to join the conversation and receive the reading material then please email Francisca Valenzuela (francisca.valenzuela_villaseca@kcl.ac.uk)

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14 May 2026 | 15.00-16.30 (Room S8.08​)

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ROUNDTABLE

​Global history and the history of science, technology and medicine​

 

Speakers:​ Francisca Valenzuela Villaseca, Jason Ng, David Brydan (CHoSTM, King's College London)

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Abstract  How can comparative and global approaches enrich our understanding of science, technology and medicine in history, and of history in general?

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In this roundtable, CHoSTM members Francisca Valenzuela, Jason Ng and David Brydan will reflect on their engagement with issues such as globality and interconnections in their research on the history of science, technology and medicine. The event is open to everyone interested in these questions in historical research.

 

This roundtable is the first of three events organised by the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, that seeks to showcase and reflect on the research conducted by, and the trajectories of, CHoSTM’s present and past affiliates.

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27 May 2026 | 15.00-16.30 (Room S8.08​)

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ROUNDTABLE

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Public Engagement and History: What can the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine offer?​

Speakers: Caitjan Gainty, David Edgerton and Chris Manias

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Abstract      This roundtable aims to reflect on what the study of science, technology and medicine in history, and history in general, offers to public debates. While it has a focus on the work of CHoSTM the event is intended for all interested in the broader questions around public history.  We will hear the experiences of three CHoSTM staff members: Caitjan Gainty, Chris Manias and David Edgerton, who have all been very active in reaching out to wider publics, and to museums, governments and think tanks.

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This roundtable is the second of three events organised by the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine that seek to showcase and reflect on the research conducted by, and the trajectories of, CHoSTM’s present and past affiliates.

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David Edgerton, as well as writing trade books, has advised politicians and policymakers on research and industrial policy, writes on British politics for the New Statesman and the Guardian, and has contributed to many radio and television programmes, most recently to Empire with David Olusoga (BBC)

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Caitjan Gainty writes extensively on contemporary and historical health matters especially as concerns issues around health scepticism, patient experience and the politics of healthcare critique. Her work has appeared in outlets like the Conversation, the Times, Scientific American, Slate, the Washington Post and the Smithsonian Magazine, among others, and her first trade book on the subject of health scepticism will appear in June.

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Chris Manias has wide experience collaborating with the arts, museum and heritage sectors around the role of palaeontology and other deep-time sciences in public culture, through his Popularizing Palaeontology: Current & Historical Perspectives network.  He is also currently finishing a trade book in the global history of palaeontology (publication due in early-2027).

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10 June 2026 | 15.00-16.30 (Room S8.08​)

CONFERENCE PAPER TALKS

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In this session, we will hear two conference papers from CHoSTM PG researchers:

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Paper title: Native Interlocutors and the Epistemological practices of Colonial Natural History at the Institution for Promoting the Natural History of India, 1804-07

 

Pranav Mohan, King's College London

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Abstract      Literature on the epistemological practices involved in the collection of faunal natural history specimens and information tends to concentrate on their movement out of the contexts in which they were produced. The analytical focus is on the decontextualizing mechanisms historically devised to manage what has been termed the ‘information overload’. Instead, this paper analyses intra colonial/contextual and extra-diagnostic epistemological practices engaged by naturalists in colonial field settings. Using the unpublished faunal descriptions of Francis Buchanan-Hamilton and William Lloyd Gibbons, naturalists who headed the colonial state-funded faunal inventorying project at the Institution for Promoting the Natural History of India, the paper demonstrates how various facets of native interlocution shaped the inventorying project. Customary bird catcher communities across the Gangetic plains, such as the Mirshekar and the Baheliya, often sourced specimens for the Institution. They alsoprovided information on the variations across the specimens made available by them, often determining species-genus identification. Decontextualizing aspects of natural history alsoobscures the occasional dependence on certain native ontologies of birds and animals for species differentiation.

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However, co-production at the Institution did not involve equally positioned colonial and indigenous actors. The early colonial practice of reconciling native Indian elites through the selective codification of their prescriptive scriptures for the administration of colonized territories is reflected in the workings of the Institution, as Buchanan asymmetrically privileged Brahmin interlocutors over other social sources. The paper thus contributes not only to the history of natural history but also extends discussions on the broader processes of knowledge production in colonial contexts.

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Paper title: Early electrification of Chile: between transnational interests and sociotechnical imaginaries (1879 - 1896)

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José Soto-Vejar, King's College London

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Abstract      This presentation will analyse the relationship between electricity consumption and imaginaries about electrification in Chile through the first electric power plants installed by Edison’s companies. In the United States and Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, historians have shown that electricity was a business in competition with gas lighting, slowly incorporated in factories that needed more reliable ways of illumination. However, the historiography has neglected these links between electricity and industry in Chile during this period. Here, I will argue that global disputes around the expansion of electrification were replicated in Chile, from the patents to the competition between gas and electricity, being the latter a central element in explaining the failure of the Edison Electric Light Company of Santiago. In addition, the gas and electric lighting companies prioritised supplying commercial and wealthy residential customers, leaving the industry outside the central stations’ main consumers. However, factories and industrial processes incorporated electric light within production activities during this period, but through on-site plants (or isolated plants, which was the concept used at the time). The mining sector had also an early interest in electricity applications for power, although with unclear results. Finally, I will claim that Chilean engineers involved in the Edison company, who blurred the line between expert and stakeholder, reflected on these events to conclude what mistakes led this enterprise to fail in Santiago, highlighting the importance of supplying electricity to the industry. This reinforces that connections between Chileans and the Edison Electric Light Company help to understand how the Chilean electrification was deployed in this period.

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23 June 2026 | 10.30-15.00 (Room S8.08​)

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CHoSTM ANNUAL VISITOR: DR GALINA SHYNDRIAYEVA

BOOK WORKSHOP​​​

Coffee and lunch will be provided

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Abstract      My concern in this book is to analyze perfume as a scientific and industrial product. Perfumery is generally studied as a product of fashion and taste, with comparatively little attention to its manner of production. Yet the design and manufacture of perfumes is a scientifically intensive and highly technical industry. Industrial research laboratories are as characteristic of perfumery as of pharmaceuticals. Partnerships with academic scientists have been important and numerous for well over a century; several Nobel Prize Laureates in Chemistry with close connections to fragrance companies include Otto Wallach (1910), Leopold Ruzicka (1939) and Ryoji Noyori (2001). Chemical companies such as DuPont invested in fragrance research and developing a market for scents. This book follows firms and technical experts in the British and American contexts, both revaluating the twentieth-century geography of perfume production as well as the contours of its scientific activity. The industry’s development over the twentieth century offers a rich and significant case study for tracing the development of commercial science in service of aesthetic appeal, which continue today with developments in AI perfumers and electronic noses.

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If you wish to receive the material, please contact Francisca Valenzuela (francisca.valenzuela_villaseca@kcl.ac.uk)

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Galina Shyndriayeva is currently a Project Manager at a sustainability start-up in Tokyo. Previously, she was a Visiting Researcher at Musashi University as well as at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, University of Tokyo. She also taught at the University of Tokyo as a Project Assistant Professor in the ALESS Program, Center for Research and Development of Higher Education. She specializes in the history of science and technology and business history. Her current book project, Sensual Science: expertise, craft, and chemical invention in global perfumery, 1900-2000, focuses on the development of perfume as a remarkable scientific and industrial product in the twentieth century. She completed her doctoral work in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at King’s College London, M.Sc. at Imperial College London, and holds a B.A. in Romance Languages and Literatures and Classics from Harvard University.

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8 July 2026 | 10.30-15.00 (Room S8.08​)

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TALK

Asilomar Revisited: Beneficial AI and the History of Scientific Ethics

Dr David Cole (Science History Institute, Philadelphia)

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Join us for a conversation with Dr David Cole about the legacy of Asilomar 1975 for contemporary efforts to shape the future of AI.

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In January 2017, the Future of Life Institute assembled a group of leaders in academia and industry (including Elon Musk, Ray Kurzweil, Demis Hassabis, and Sam Altman) for a landmark gathering: “The Asilomar Conference on Beneficial AI 2017”.Convened at the famed Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, CA, participants in this conference wrestled with the “opportunities and challenges” presented by the evolution of AI technologies, emerging from their deliberations with a set of 23 “Asilomar AI Principles”, intended to guide the ethical pursuit of AI “ for the benefit of humanity”.

In 2026, as issues and dilemmas concerning the responsible development of AI have only grown more timely and pressing, it is worth revisiting Beneficial AI 2017 and attempting to recover a historical context for this significant meeting.

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This presentation will frame the deliberations and outcomes of the Beneficial AI 2017 conference against the backdrop of the famed 1975 Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA and DNA cloning—a watershed meeting in the history of modern science. It will explore the significance of Asilomar 1975 for actors in science, industry, government, and civil society who sought to guide the ethical pursuit of AI in 2017 and will consider the implications of the Asilomar legacy for contemporary efforts to shape the future of artificial intelligence.

 

David Allen Cole is the President and CEO of the Science History Institute (SHI) in Philadelphia. Prior to his tenure at SHI, he served as the Executive Director of the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. His principal research interest is in innovation history and theory, and he is the author of The Power of Innovation, an exhibition and catalogue on the history of American invention and the U.S. patent system in the nineteenth century, presented at the National Museum of China (2018). A graduate of Vanderbilt University, he received a master’s degree from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in the History of Art and American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Cole has been a Henry Luce Foundation Fellow, a Research Fellow of the Learning Innovations Laboratory (LILA) of Harvard University, and has taught at Harvard University, Rice University, and the University of Texas at Austin.