Two hands holding a smart phone photograph a placental dyeing procedure that researches freemartinism in cows.

Doctors at Leiden University hospital reenact Frank Lillie’s early placental dyeing method used as a diagnostic tool for assessing placental anastomosis. Used to study a biological phenomenon in genetically female cows born from a dizygotic twin pregnancy, called freemartinism, the dyeing technique maps the exchange of blood and hormones across the placental connection that renders the female twin intersex and unable to conceive. Film still from Flush (2023). © Lucy Beech, courtesy of the artist.

Director

Director

Histories of Planning

group members crowded for a photo

Research Support

Research Officer

Research Officer / Wissenschaftliche Referentin in Abt. III

Publications Manager

Publications Manager

Departmental Assistant

Departmental Assistant

Researchers

Postdoctoral Scholar

Turtles of Time: Extinction, Cosmology, and the Epistemic Afterlives of Giant Tortoises in the Southwest Indian Ocean

Postdoctoral Scholar

Astral Imagery in the Islamicate World from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period (12th- 18th Century)

Visiting Senior Research Fellow (Sep 2025 - Dec 2027)

Toxic Legacies: The Material History and Heritage of Mining in Central Europe

Senior Research Scholar

Visiting Senior Research Fellow

Crafting at the Fringes of Empire: Ecology, Trade, and Technology in the Ryukyu Islands

Postdoctoral Fellow (Feb 2026 - Jul 2026)

Terra Rossa: Miltos and its Mineralogy in Antiquity

Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow (Feb 2023 - Dec 2028)

The Origin Story at the End of the Universe: On the Problems of Modern Physical Cosmology

Postdoctoral Scholar

What do/should we know about our body? Bodily imagination in Medical Texts from Household Encyclopedias from 14th-19th century China.

Visiting Senior Research Fellow (Mar 2026 - May 2026)

Metals in the Archive

Project Coordinator

Premodern Agricultural Knowledge in New Persian

Senior Research Fellow (Oct 2025 - May 2026)

The Inscriptions of the Antikythera Mechanism

Postdoctoral Scholar

Valuing Veins: Clay and Gold in the Medieval Deccan

Visiting Senior Research Fellow (Sep 2025 - Aug 2027)

Minerals for Glass, Ceramics and Porcelain

Research Scholar

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (Nov 2025 - Apr 2026)

Knowledge Integration of the Classic of Mountains: Reconstructing Ancient Geographical and Ecological Knowledge Heritage with Artificial Intelligence

Postdoctoral Scholar

Cures and Curiosities: Visualizing the Stone Disease

Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow (Mar 2025 - Mar 2027)

Reading the Skies: Astral Prognostication of Rainfall in the Early Islamic Centuries

Senior Research Scholar

Postdoctoral Fellow (Oct 2025 - Sep 2026)

Exploring Object-Oriented Astronomical Multiplicities of the Japanese Archipelago

Postdoctoral Scholar

Coral Communities: History of Marine Species from Lakshadweep Islands

Postdoctoral Scholar

Hapmen’s Enchanted Basin: The Life of a Pharaonic Sarcophagus in Mamluk Egypt and Beyond

Postdoctoral Scholar

Cutting, Carving, Poisoning: The Social Drama of Lacquer Craft in the Great Ming

Rathenau Senior Fellow

History of Mathematics and Physics (Nineteenth and Twentieth Century), History of Technology

Visiting Senior Research Fellow (Mar 2025 - Dec 2027)

Industryscapes: Socio-Natural Sites of Extraction, Production, and Knowledge Making

Postdoctoral Fellow (Apr 2022 - Mar 2023)

Breeding Against Extinction: Knowledges and Practices of Species Conservation in Interwar Poland

Research Scholar

Private Menageries and the Limits of the Empire: The Case of Pilawin Park (1901–1918)

Predoctoral Scholar

The Strange as Knowledge: Collections of the Anomalous and Marvellous within Late-Imperial Leishu (1600-1900)

Visiting Senior Research Fellow (Sep 2024 - Dec 2026)

The Prints and Printing Culture of the Old Uyghurs on the Northern Silk Road

Postdoctoral Fellow (Aug 2025 - Jul 2026)

Chinese Star Maps

Postdoctoral Scholar

The Making of Visual Knowledge: Illustrations and Painting Manuals (huapu men) in Ming and Qing Household Encyclopedias