Past Events by Year
December 2020
- 12:00 to 13:30
- Reading Group
Experiences and Signification in Medieval Latin Natural Philosophy
Organizer(s)Contact and Registration
Please note that this event series will take place on Zoom and thus pre-registration is required. All reading materials will be circulated one week in advance. For more information and registering please contact Maria Avxentevskaya.
About This Series
The series of reading sessions "The Premodern History of Signification: Putting Experiences into Words, Images, and Signs" explores how the premodern experiences of the natural world were expressed, recorded, and communicated through verbal, visual, and semiotic means. By analyzing the premodern theorizing and practices concerning signification we aim to clarify how diverse views on it as an intellectual, cognitive, and performative process affected the production of knowledge in the premodern world. The group will meet online in November 2020 to February 2021 and discuss the primary sources suggested and introduced at each session by the group participants specializing in historical areas from classical to premodern traditions up to the eighteenth century on a global scale.
- 13:00 to 15:00
- Seminar
Léon Rosenfeld and His Understanding of the Necessity of Quantizing Fields
Organizer(s)Contact and Registration
This event takes place online. All are welcome, no registration required.
For further information please email officeblum@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de.
- 16:00 to 17:30
- Primary Source Discussion Group
Ability and Authority
Organizer(s)Contact and Registration
The meetings will take place on Zoom. Listeners are welcome. Please register by emailing Qiao Yang.
About This Series
The "Ability and Authority" primary source discussion group aims to address the major research questions of the working group through the introduction of its members' key primary sources. The four meetings of the series are organized according to themes, each led by several working group members. Reading material and leading questions of each session will be circulated in advance. In the meeting itself we will devote most of the time to discuss the key questions.
- Workshop
Visual Materials in Local Gazetteers
Organizer(s)Contact and Registration
The workshop will take place in room 265 and on Zoom. It is a closed workshop (only those selected via the CFA may attend); MPIWG researchers interested in sitting in as internal observers should contact Shih-Pei Chen.
- 14:00 to 15:30
- Colloquium
Theories of Change; Or, How Sea Level Rise Became a Historical Event
AddressMax Planck Institute for the History of Science, Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany
RoomZoom/Online Meeting PlatformContact and Registration
Attendance is mandatory for Department III members. We additionally have room for ten guests and welcome those who wish to join us from other Departments and Research Groups. Please register in advance by emailing EVENT_DEPT3@MPIWG-BERLIN.MPG.DE with subject heading "RSVP Dept III Colloquium" and the date of the colloquium you wish to attend.
- 12:00 to 13:30
- Digital Humanities Workshop
Software Building for Textual Scholarship Practices
- Dept. IIIResearch IT
- Mahmoud Kozae
Contact and Registration
Please email Research IT Group for the Zoom link.
All are welcome to attend, regardless of prior experience of the digital humanities. Registration is required for external participants. To register, and for further information on the Digital Humanities Brown Bag Lunch series email Research IT Group.
About This Series
Brown Bag Lunch is a bi-weekly meeting of researchers at the MPIWG who use or want to learn more about digital research methods, broadly encompassed by the term Digital Humanities. In the Brown Bag Lunch meetings, researchers can discuss tools, share ideas and experiences (good and bad), and learn from each other. Each session explores a new topic; workshops are usually interactive, and we often invite external speakers. Please feel free to bring your lunch, and a laptop or notebook in order to participate!
- 14:00 to 16:00
- Seminar
John Wheeler between Cold Matter and Frozen Stars: The Road Towards Black Holes
Organizer(s)Contact and Registration
This event takes place online. All are welcome, no registration required.
For further information please email officeblum@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de.
- 12:00 to 13:30
- Reading Group
Name, Thing Named, and Signification in Classic Islamic Theology
Organizer(s)Contact and Registration
Please note that this event series will take place on Zoom and thus pre-registration is required. All reading materials will be circulated one week in advance. For more information and registering please contact Maria Avxentevskaya.
About This Series
The series of reading sessions "The Premodern History of Signification: Putting Experiences into Words, Images, and Signs" explores how the premodern experiences of the natural world were expressed, recorded, and communicated through verbal, visual, and semiotic means. By analyzing the premodern theorizing and practices concerning signification we aim to clarify how diverse views on it as an intellectual, cognitive, and performative process affected the production of knowledge in the premodern world. The group will meet online in November 2020 to February 2021 and discuss the primary sources suggested and introduced at each session by the group participants specializing in historical areas from classical to premodern traditions up to the eighteenth century on a global scale.
- 10:30 to 11:30
- Early Career Seminar
Horses in Bohai and Jurchen Societies: Based on Osteological Studies from the South Part of the Russian Far East
Organizer(s)Contact and Registration
All scholars throughout the Institute are encouraged to attend and contribute to the discussion. We do hope that many of you will take advantage of this wonderful opportunity for young researchers across the Institute to share their work in progress!
Please join this online meeting on Zoom and pre-register by writing to Shehab Ismail.
External participants should register in advance with Shehab. Please also contact him for further information.
About This Series
The Early Career Seminar opens itself to early career researchers from across the Institute to discuss their work in a formal, yet friendly setting. We particularly welcome submissions of work in progress, such as dissertation chapters and drafts of papers intended for publication.
Sessions are held on Wednesdays, from 11:00 to 12:00, once a month.
Each session consists of a five-minute introduction by the presenter, followed by a discussion for the remainder of the hour concerning the presenter's pre-circulated paper. Pre-circulated papers should not exceed ca. 30 pages. Presenters are requested to submit their work to the organizers at least one week in advance of their session.
- 14:00 to 15:30
- Colloquium
Cultural Translation Processes in 16th Century Tunisia: The Case of ´Alī B. Aḥmad B. Muḥammad Al-Sharafī from Sfax
AddressMax Planck Institute for the History of Science, Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany
RoomZoom/Online Meeting PlatformContact and Registration
Attendance is mandatory for Department III members. We additionally have room for ten guests and welcome those who wish to join us from other Departments and Research Groups. Please register in advance by emailing event_dept3@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de with the subject heading "RSVP Dept III Colloquium" and the date of the colloquium you wish to attend.
November 2020
- 14:00 to 16:00
- Seminar
Formal or Material? Gauge and the Gravity-Electromagnetism Analogy
- Max Planck Research Group (Final Theory Program)
- Several Speakers
- Noah Stemeroff
- Guy Hetzroni
Organizer(s)Contact and Registration
This event takes place online. All are welcome, no registration required.
For further information please email officeblum@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de.
- 14:00 to 15:00
- Discussion Group
Measuring the Earth Discussion Group
Organizer(s)Contact and Registration
This event will take place online. If you have questions about the discussion group, a specific session, or to register, please contact Wilko Hardenberg.
- 12:00 to 13:30
- Reading Group
Signification in Ancient Greek Philosophy
Organizer(s)Contact and Registration
Please note that this event series will take place on Zoom and thus pre-registration is required. All reading materials will be circulated one week in advance. For more information and registering please contact Maria Avxentevskaya.
About This Series
The series of reading sessions "The Premodern History of Signification: Putting Experiences into Words, Images, and Signs" explores how the premodern experiences of the natural world were expressed, recorded, and communicated through verbal, visual, and semiotic means. By analyzing the premodern theorizing and practices concerning signification we aim to clarify how diverse views on it as an intellectual, cognitive, and performative process affected the production of knowledge in the premodern world. The group will meet online in November 2020 to February 2021 and discuss the primary sources suggested and introduced at each session by the group participants specializing in historical areas from classical to premodern traditions up to the eighteenth century on a global scale.
- 14:00 to 15:30
- Colloquium
Empire and Information: How to be Understood in the Wake of the Mongol Empire’s Fall
AddressMax Planck Institute for the History of Science, Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany
RoomZoom/Online Meeting PlatformContact and Registration
Attendance is mandatory for Department III members. We additionally have room for ten guests and welcome those who wish to join us from other Departments and Research Groups. Please register in advance by emailing EVENT_DEPT3@MPIWG-BERLIN.MPG.DE with subject heading "RSVP Dept III Colloquium" and the date of the colloquium you wish to attend.
- 12:00 to 13:30
- Digital Humanities Workshop
Digital Humanities: Multilinguality, Non-Latin Scripts and the Library
- Research IT
- Several Speakers
- Cosima Wagner
- Martin Lee
Contact and Registration
Please email Research IT Group for the Zoom link.
All are welcome to attend, regardless of prior experience of the digital humanities. Registration is required for external participants. To register, and for further information on the Digital Humanities Brown Bag Lunch series email Research IT Group.
About This Series
Brown Bag Lunch is a bi-weekly meeting of researchers at the MPIWG who use or want to learn more about digital research methods, broadly encompassed by the term Digital Humanities. In the Brown Bag Lunch meetings, researchers can discuss tools, share ideas and experiences (good and bad), and learn from each other. Each session explores a new topic; workshops are usually interactive, and we often invite external speakers. Please feel free to bring your lunch, and a laptop or notebook in order to participate!
- 16:00 to 17:30
- Primary Source Discussion Group
Ability and Authority
Organizer(s)Contact and Registration
The meetings will take place on Zoom. Listeners are welcome. Please register by emailing Qiao Yang.
- 11:00 to 12:30
- Reading Group
Troubling Epistemics and Postcolonialism
Organizer(s)Contact and Registration
Everyone is welcome to join. For registration or any questions about the seminar please contact Marianna Szczygielska.
About This Series
“Troubling Epistemics and Postcolonialism” is a monthly reading seminar interrogating "postcolonial" as an analytic concept in the history of science. The goal is to understand the ethics and mechanisms of our own epistemic practices as they relate to politics and power. We aim to examine the ways that epistemology is both historically contingent and actively produced within the history of science with the goal of troubling our disciplinary positions. For each meeting we list and circulate
- a short ‘provocative text’ to carry the empirical element and to provoke us to go wider in attempting to attend to something that troubles. Everyone is expected to read that text
- two or three "theoretical" or descriptive papers that we feel might be useful in "attending to the trouble." These are optional readings. The idea is that everyone who attends the discussion will have read at least the short provocation paper and bring some "troubles" to the meeting
- 15:00 to 17:00
- Seminar
How "Epistemological Letters" Changed the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
Organizer(s)Contact and Registration
This event takes place online. All are welcome, no registration required.
For further information please email officeblum@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de.