Occasional updates about projects, publications and public engagement activities in which I or my collaborators are involved.
(Melting) Ice
The second event in the Manchester Workshop Series on Natural Archives and the History of Science in Asia, convened by Dr Amelia Bonea and Dr Meng Zhang, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester, in collaboration with the John Rylands Research Institute and Library and Manchester China Institute. Free and open to all. Eventbrite registration link here.
Date and time: Monday, 17 November 2025, 2 – 4:30pm GMT, online
Speakers:
Dr Tilak Tewari (Dehradun) – Disciplining Ice: Colonial Bodies and the Neglected Origins of Glaciology in High Mountain Asia (c. 1808-1860)
Dr Katja Doose (Lyon 2 & Fribourg) – Glaciers between Archive and Laboratory: A History of Central Asian Glaciology in the Late 19th to the Mid-20th Century
Prof Yuriko Furuhata (McGill University) – Refrigerated Time Capsules: Cinema and the Colonial Roots of Japan’s Polar Science
Xin Yang (Glasgow) – Situating Polar Science: China’s Pathways from the Third Pole to the Poles
Animals in East Asia
The first event in the Manchester Workshop Series on Natural Archives and the History of Science in Asia, convened by Dr Amelia Bonea and Dr Meng Zhang, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester, in collaboration with the John Rylands Research Institute and Library and Manchester China Institute. Free and open to all. Details here.
Date and time: Thursday, 12 June 2025, 10am – 12:30pm GMT+1, in person and online
Speakers:
Dr Jaehwan Hyun (Pusan) – Japanese Collectors in Colonial Korea and Memories of Imperial Natural History
Dr Amelia Bonea (Manchester) – Fossil Animals and Imperial Histories in East and South Asia, 1850s-1940s
Dr Hsiao-pei Yen (National Yang-Ming Chiao-Tung University) – Fossils, Gender, and the Nation: Mee-mann Chang and Paleontology of Early Vertebrates in Socialist China
Dr Meng Zhang (Manchester) – Masking Canines in China: Rabies Control, Moral Anxieties, and Blurred Human-Animal Boundaries, 1900s-50s
Photograph courtesy of the Main Library, Kyoto University: Chishitsugaku kakezu; dai7zu: hakuaki kaseki [Geological wall charts; Fig. 7: Cretaceous fossils] (Tokyo, 1902?), https://rmda.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/item/rb00024008
Fossil Stories
A series of creative workshops with primary school children leading to a multimedia, multisensory exhibition on the topic of creating hope in times of environmental crisis. Organized by Amelia Bonea, in collaboration with artist Emily Heyworth, palaeontologist Fiona Gill (Leeds) and the Manchester Museum, as part of the 2024 Being Human Festival.
Roundtable: The News of Empire
Monde(s). Histoire, Espaces, Relations published a roundtable on Amelia Bonea’s The News of Empire: Telegraphy, Journalism, and the Politics of Reporting in Colonial India, c.1830-1900, as part of a special issue on global postal traffic.
Blog post: Owning the (Deep) Past: Paleontological Knowledge and the Political Afterlives of Fossils
Amelia Bonea publishes essay on the History of Knowledge blog of the German Historical Institute Washington.
BSHS Digital Festival Roundtable
A conversation on science, environmental histories and public engagement in South Asia, featuring Amelia Bonea, Vaishali Shroff, Kartik Shanker and Graeme Gooday.
New Publication: Drafts of History: The World in Newspapers on a Single Day
A visual catalogue of an international newspaper archive created in 1888 to mark the demise of Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany. Edited by Vaibhav Singh, with an introduction by Amelia Bonea.
SHOT Inaugural Mercurians Prize
Amelia Bonea wins the inaugural Mercurians Prize of the Society for the History of Technology for her paper “‘Contagion by Telephone’: Print Media and Knowledge about Infectious Diseases in Britain, 1880s–1914,” Technology and Culture 62, 4, (2021): 1063-86.
BBC Future: India’s Fossil Heritage
A BBC Future interview on India’s fossil heritage, also featuring DFG collaborators Prof Ashok Sahni and Dr Advait Jukar.
Lecture & Tutorial: Science Gallery Bengaluru
Amelia Bonea gives online lecture and tutorial on media, communication technologies and infectious diseases.
Joint Keynote Lecture: Bias in the Fossil Record
Online workshop on diversifying and decolonising the history of palaeontology at the University of Leeds.
4A Lab Seminar: Fossil Histories
Amelia Bonea gives online talk at the Kunsthistorisches Institut Florence.
Conference Programme: HIDDEN HISTORIES: WOMEN AND SCIENCE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
The program of the virtual conference Hidden Histories: Women and Science in the Twentieth Century is available for download.
CFP Virtual Conference: HIDDEN HISTORIES: WOMEN AND SCIENCE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
An international conference organized by Dr Amelia Bonea (University of Heidelberg) & Dr Irina Nastasă-Matei (University of Bucharest)
Date: 7-8 May 2021
Venue: Online
Soviet Information Bureau Photograph Collection. Fung Library, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
Along The Lines
Documentary theatre performance on technology, communication and distance, organized by Amelia Bonea in collaboration with Anuja Ghosalkar and Focus High School, Hyderabad
Date: 17 October 2020
Venue: Online
AMELIA BONEA 