Research events
King's College provides support for conferences, linked seminars and workshops of particular interest to the Fellowship. Applications for support should be directed to the Research Committee.
Forthcoming events
June 2013
- Stranger Kings in General: The Cosmo-logics of Power
4 June 2013, 3pm, Wine Room
Marshall Sahlins (University of Chicago) - 'On the Culture of Material Value and the Cosmography of Riches' and 'Difference'
5 June 2013, 5pm, Wine Room
Marshall Sahlins (University of Chicago) - 'Floreat Bibliomania' – Great Collectors and their Grand Designs
28-29 June 2013
A centenary conference in memory of the librarian and bibliographer A.N.L. (Tim) Munby.
Details: King's Members' website
Previous events in 2012/13
May 2013
- Can computers have interesting mathematical ideas?
9 May 2013, 6pm Beves Room
Sir William Timothy Gowers FRS - Do Complex Neurodegenerative Diseases Follow Simple Chemical Rules?
13 May 2013, 5pm Keynes Hall
Prajwal Ciryam
April 2013
- The Higgs Boson and Beyond
23 April 2013, 8.30pm, Keynes Hall
Prof John Ellis FRS CBE
October 2012
- Making a scene: the problem of embarrassability in rough and tumble times
16 October, 5pm
Prof Bill Miller (History/Law at Michigan)
CRASSH, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road (and King's for drinks afterwards)
Organiser: Anastasia Piliavsky and Alice Taylor
Previous events in 2011/12
July 2012
- Reading the Mother from Antiquity to Shakespeare:
Critical Approaches to the Maternal in Premodern Literature
Organiser: Mairéad McAuley
Workshop outline
June 2012
- Turing conference (15-16 June)
Organiser: Mark Sprevak
May 2012
- Violence and identity: comparison between Hungary and Spain
8 May, 5pm
Nora Berend (Cambridge)
King's College Wine Room
Organiser: Anastasia Piliavsky and Alice Taylor - Working at crime: the professional gang in the eighteenth century
22 May, 5pm
Douglas Hay (York, Canada)
King's College Wine Room
Organiser: Anastasia Piliavsky and Alice Taylor
April 2012
- Our words, and theirs: a reflection of the historian's craft, today
Carlo Ginzberg (Pisa)
(24 April)
Organiser: Anastasia Piliavsky and Alice Taylor
March 2012
- Philosophy/Anthropology Meeting 2
Organiser: James Laidlaw
February 2012
- History, as It Hasn't Yet Happened
Prof Caroline Humphrey
(14 February)
Organiser: Anastasia Piliavsky
January 2012
- Work in Progress Seminar: Michael Herzfeld
(17-19 January 2012)
Organiser: Anastasia Piliavsky
November 2011
- History and Anthropology at King's Seminar Series
(1 & 15 November)
Organisers: Anastasia Piliavsky and Alice Taylor - Philosophy/Anthropology Meeting 1
Organiser: James Laidlaw
October 2011
- History and Anthropology at King's Seminar Series
(18 October)
Organisers: Anastasia Piliavsky and Alice Taylor
Patronage in South Asia
30 September-1 October 2011
Organiser: Anastasia Piliavsky
In recent decades patronage has been all but absent from the menu of South Asianists' interests. Recent observations of corrupt 'clientelistic' politics in South Asia, however, remind us of a need for a better understanding of what, if anything, may be meant by 'patronage', and the place of the phenomenon in local political and social life in the region. The Colloquium brings together a multi-disciplinary group of researchers, who will interrogate the history and sociology of patronage in South Asia.
See the conference website.
Previous events in 2010/11
The Cambridge Triennial
June 2011
Organiser: Simon Goldhill
Transmissible Cancers (two-day conference)
June 2011
Organiser: Elizabeth Murchison
Uncertain Knowledge in the Middle Ages
King's College, 9 - 12 April 2011
What are the forms in which later medieval thinkers articulate epistemological scepticism, relativism and doubt? Is it possible to voice different forms of uncertainty in different institutional contexts and languages? This interdisciplinary conference brings into dialogue historians of philosophy, theology, history and literature.
See the conference website.
Work in Progress Seminar Series
Prof Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of History of Religions, University of Chicago
Noted cultural historian and South Asianist Prof. Wendy Doniger will deliver a series of three seminars in King's College from 4-6pm on 23-25 November 2010.
In addition to being one of the most distinguished scholars in the humanities today, Professor Doniger is an excellent speaker whose wide-ranging interests cover areas as diverse as literature, anthropology, gender studies, psychoanalysis, history, and oriental studies.
Prof. Doniger will base her seminars on chapters of her current book manuscript Faking It: Narratives of Circular Jewelry and Deceptive Women.
- The Ring in the Fish, Polycrate and Shakuntala
- All’s Well that Ends Well. (This story goes back, via Boccaccio, to the story of Muladeva in the Kathasaritsagara.)
- Fake Jewelry and Fake Women (19th, 20th, and 21st century stories, de Maupassant, Henry James, Maugham, and several films, including Vertigo and Random Harvest.)
Prof Doniger has honorary doctorates from six universities, including Harvard, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. She is the author of 26 books including Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India, The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was and The Hindus: An Alternative History.
For details of the seminars contact Dr Bert Vaux ( ).
