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.
Department
Artifacts, Action, Knowledge
Director
Director
Histories of Planning
Research Support
Departmental Research Coordinator
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 Fellow (May 2026 - Jul 2026)
Mining and the Prevalence of Mineral Pigments in Paintings 1300–1750
Senior Research Scholar
Postdoctoral Scholar
From Fuel to Common Knowledge: The Epistemic Life of Coal in China, 1500– 1930
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.
Project Coordinator
Premodern Agricultural Knowledge in New Persian
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
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
Postdoctoral Fellow (Jun 2026 - Dec 2026)
Noxious Life: Figuring Vermin in the Natural Histories of the Anglophone Caribbean
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
Research Scholar
Private Menageries and the Limits of the Empire: The Case of Pilawin Park (1901–1918)
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