Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry - Oxford Talks

Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry

The Oxford Seminar for 2024 will be running three sessions, each consisting of two papers.

The session dates and times are Wednesdays, 22 & 29 May, and 5 June, and they will take place at the Maison Française d’Oxford, 2-10 Norham Road, Oxford OX2 6SE.

Each session has two speakers, who will deliver papers of 30-40 minutes, leaving 20-30 minutes for questions and discussion.

The seminar is sponsored and supported by The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry and by the Maison Française d’Oxford.

Type: Seminar Series
Series organisers: John Christie (University of Oxford) , Georgiana Hedesan (University of Oxford)
Timing: Wednesdays, 15:00-17:00
Organising department: Maison Française d'Oxford

Wednesday 17 January 2018

15:00 - Pulling the Receipts: gender, alchemy and intellectual networks in early modern England AND Alchemy in the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century
Sofie Jaeger (KCL), Mariana Sanchez Daza (Paris Diderot)

Wednesday 24 January 2018

15:00 - Powers of Perfection: the chemical and material mastery of Alexandre Brogniart AND The uses and misuses of carbon tetrachloride in British homes from the 1930s to the 1980s
Julia Carr-Trebelhorn (Oxford), Cat Rushmore (Oxford Brookes)

Wednesday 31 January 2018

15:00 - How chemists sought to regulate food in France, Germany, Britain and the United States, 1800-1914 AND Values and uses: how Mendeleev’s valuing of completeness supported predicting
Carolyn Cobbold (Cambridge), Karoliina Pulkkinen (Cambridge)

Wednesday 22 May 2019

15:00 - Alchemy and Paracelsianism at the Casino San Marco in Florence under the patronage of Antonio de’ Medici (1576-1621)
Jo Hedesan (University of Oxford)

Wednesday 29 May 2019

15:00 - A prospect and preview of 'A Cultural History of Chemistry' (6 vols., Bloomsbury, forthcoming)
Various Speakers

Wednesday 5 June 2019

16:00 - Substitution & Chemistry in the 20th century
Pierre Teissier (Université de Nantes), Mat Paskins (London School of Economics)

Thursday 20 May 2021

15:30 - The role of chemists in the development of First World War respirators
Shelley Castle (Sommerville College, Oxford)

Friday 4 June 2021

16:00 - The Politics of Chemistry: Science and Power in Twentieth-Century Spain
Agustí Nieto-Galan (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Thursday 10 June 2021

16:00 - Restricted Priority: Debating the Invention of Agent Orange in the Aftermath of War
Allison McManus (Princeton University)

Wednesday 3 May 2023

15:00 - Medieval Islamic Alchemy and its Influence
Salam Rassi (Edinburgh), Tom Fischer (EPHE Paris), Chair: Jennifer M Rampling (Princeton)

Wednesday 17 May 2023

15:00 - Vintage Analogies in Medieval and Early Modern Medical Alchemy
Mark Thakkar (St Andrews), Carmen Schmechel (FU Berlin), Chair: Rob Iliffe (Oxford)

Wednesday 24 May 2023

15:00 - Religion and Medicine in Early Modern Alchemy
Zoe Screti (Oxford), Elisabeth Moreau (Cambridge), Chair: Jo Hedesan (Oxford)

Wednesday 31 May 2023

15:00 - Chemical Careers in New Contexts, 1760-1860
Robert Fox (Oxford), Frank James and Anna Simmons (UCL), Chair: John Christie (Oxford)

Wednesday 14 June 2023

15:00 - What’s in a Substance? Making Identity and Purity in Modern Chemistry
Catherine Jackson (Oxford), Marabel Riesmeier (Cambridge), Chair: John Christie (Oxford)

Wednesday 22 May 2024

15:00 - Substance and Identity: Histoires Petites et Grandes
John R R Christie (Oxford), Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent (Paris)

Wednesday 29 May 2024

15:00 - Meissen Coloration and Pacific Chemical Medicine
Nicholas Zumbulyadis (Delaware), Mariana Sanchez (Paris)

Wednesday 5 June 2024

15:00 - Acquiring science in early 19th century York: the diary of Jane Ewbank
Rachel Feldberg (York), Matthew Eddy (Durham)

Showing all talks

Editors: Laura Spence, Belinda Clark

This series features in the following public collections: