by Dr. Chiara Blanco (Newcastle University) The academic conference ‘The Epistemology of Ancient Embryology’ took place over three days from the 1st to the 3rd of July 2024 at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge in a hybrid format, and it included a total of 14 speakers and a peak of 53 attendants (22 in person and 31 online) from all over the world. The conference explored ancient theories concerning the formation and development of the embryo, and how ancient physicians and philosophers sought to address this complex issue by applying their own doctrines and beliefs. This latter, particularly fascinating, aspect entailed a discussion of a plethora of different methodological solutions adopted by ancient thinkers, from analogies mostly based on artifacts, plants and other animals, to cosmological and mathematical calculations. Thus the conference provided a platform to compare different ancient views about the topic, while highlighting connections and the development of such ideas in the ancient world; its epistemological angle, along with its focus on interactions between different authors, which went beyond Classical antiquity, and also embraced ancient Egypt and China, constitutes a true novelty for the field. Caterina Pellò (Geneva) opened the conference with a paper discussing some […]

by the Past & Present editorial team Past and Present was pleased to learn that Dr. Somak Biswas (Cambridge) has been awarded the 2024 UK Royal Historical Society’s (RHS) Gladstone Prize. The RHS website explains: “The Gladstone Book Prize was launched in 1998 following a founding donation from the Gladstone Memorial Trust on the centenary of William Gladstone’s death. The prize offers an annual award of £1,000 for a work of history on a topic not primarily related to British history that is the author’s first sole book publication. In 2015, the Linbury Trust made a generous donation of £12,500 in support of the Gladstone Prize.” Dr. Biswas was awarded this year’s prize for his book Passages through India: Indian Gurus, Western Disciples and the Politics of Indophilia, 1890–1940 (Cambridge, 2023) which he worked on while a Past and Present Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, London. The judges citation states: “We are very pleased to award this year’s prize to Somak Biswas’s ‘Passages Through India: Indian Gurus, Western Disciples and the Politics of Indophilia, 1890-1940′. The panel agreed that is an elegantly written and inventive study that provocatively unsettles our historical understandings of leading Hindu Indian figures (including Gandhi, Tagore, […]

by the Past & Present editorial team Past and Present was pleased to learn that Dr. Damilola Adebayo (York University) was awarded two prizes at July’s Joint ICOHTEC-SHOT 2024 annual meeting at Viña del Mar, Chile. The prize was awarded for his Open Access article “Electricity, Agency and Class in Lagos Colony, C.1860S–1914” which was published in Past & Present No. 262 (February 2024). Dr. Adebayo was awarded the International Commitee for the History of Technology’s (ICOHTEC) Maurice Daumas Prize. The Maurice Daumas Prize is awarded annually by ICOHTEC: “…to the author of the best article submitted which deals with the history of technology in any period of the past or in any part of the world and which was published in a journal or edited volume in last two consequent years.” Dr. Adebayo was also awarded the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) Bernard S. Finn IEEE History Prize. The Bernard S. Finn IEEE History Prize is: “…awarded annually to the best paper in the history of electrotechnology – power, electronics, telecommunications, and computer science.” Our congradulations to Dr. Adebayo on his research being recognised with these two prestigious awards.  

by Dr. Nathan Cardon (University of Birmingham) and Dr. Paul Lawrie (York University) On Thursday, 25 April 2024, thanks to the generosity of the Past and Present Society, historians gathered at the University of Birmingham for a one-day workshop to discuss how we might translate new historical work on the intersections of race, technology, and temporality to a wider audience with science and technology museums as sites of intervention. In recent years, the extension of racial exclusion to new technologies has made headlines around the world. It is clear that new technologies rather than disrupting racial biases have continued them: whether that it is in face- and voice recognition software, generative AI replicating racist stereotypes to new technologies of surveillance and social media’s metastasizing the networks and discourse of white supremacy. As sociologist Ruha Benjamin has made clear, current forms of online technology and software not only reproduce anti-Black racism but are products of it, leading her to claim we live in a period of a ‘New Jim Code’.1 What is striking about many of these conversations is the lack of historical questions. Historians seem to be absent from a seat at the table thus exacerbating notions of technology as […]

by Dr. Matilda Greig (National Army Museum, London) Humanitarianism and the military should no longer be seen as parallel but separate subjects, and our understanding of both ‘military humanitarianism’ and its chronology need to significantly expand. Rather than seeing it as post-Cold War phenomenon, could we trace the roots of military–humanitarian interaction back to the early nineteenth century, or beyond? This was the central provocation behind the call for contributions for an edited volume, issued in early 2023 by Margot Tudor and Brian Drohan, which was tested on 15th and 16th January 2024 in discussions at a workshop at City, University of London, where contributors to the volume shared the findings from their first drafts. Present to ponder over these questions was a room full of international historians, political scientists, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, myself as an over-eager literary historian, and the most superior conference pastries I’ve ever encountered. Broadening the definition of military humanitarianism beyond simply military interventions motivated or justified by humanitarian ideals, the editors had challenged us also to think about the many points of connection between the armed forces and humanitarian organisations, and the influence of humanitarian ideals upon military identities […]

by the Past & Present editorial team Past & Present was pleased to learn that Dr. Jessica O’Leary (Australian Catholic University) has recently been awarded two prizes for her Open Access article “The Uprooting of Indigenous Women’s Horticultural Practices in Brazil, 1500–1650” which was published in Past & Present No. 262 (February 2024). Dr. O’Leary was awarded the biennial Philippa Maddern ECR Publication Prize by the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (ANZAMEMS). As ANZAMEMS explain: “The Philippa Maddern ECR Publication Prize is awarded to an Early Career Researcher (ECR) for the best article-length scholarly work in any discipline/topic falling within the scope of medieval and early modern studies, published within the below date range.” More recently Dr. O’Leary was awarded the Australian Women’s History Network’s Mary Bennett Prize. This prize is awarded “to the best article or chapter bearing the hallmarks of advanced historical scholarship and contribution to the academic field of women’s history”. The award is only made in years when a piece of scholarship is deemed to have reached the levels of quality and significance required to obtain it. When awarded the prize consists of an award of two hundred Australian Dollars and […]