Alex Aylward (Departmental Lecturer in History of Science) and Carlos López Beltrán (Visiting Scholar in OCHSMT) have started up what they hope will be a friendly and informal reading group to discuss recent work on the history of modern biology.

Trinity Term 2022
This term we are reading Elise K. Burton’s Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity (Stanford, 2021). The publisher’s blurb states:

“Genetic Crossroads is an unprecedented history of human genetics in the Middle East, from its roots in colonial anthropology and medicine to recent genome sequencing projects. It illuminates how scientists from Turkey to Yemen, Egypt to Iran, transformed genetic data into territorial claims and national origin myths. Burton shows why such nationalist appropriations of genetics are not local or temporary aberrations, but rather the enduring foundations of international scientific interest in Middle Eastern populations to this day”

Meetings will take place in odd weeks (1, 3, 5 & 7) on Wednesday afternoons, 16:30-17:30, in the Seminar Room at 47 Banbury Road (Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology). If you are interested in joining the group, please get in touch with Alex Aylward (alexander.aylward@history.ox.ac.uk).