Speaking Engagements
2025
“Heredity Between In-Formation and Materialism,” History of Science Society, New Orleans, November 2025 (scheduled).
2025
“ἥκιστα ἡ φύσις φιλόκαινος. Plutarch on Creativity and its Problems,” CAAS, Silver Springs, October 2025 (scheduled).
2025
“Symptoms of Creativity. An Ontology of Writing,” CANE, Yale University, March 21.
2025
“On Body Compositions – Nature, Text, & Poet,” Alexander Grass Humanities Institute (JHU), February 21
2024
“Creativity in an Age of Machines,” PAMLA Palm Springs, November 10.
2024
“Writers and their Doctors” CAMWS San Antonio, October 24.
2024
“On Hating Vergil. Creativity in an Age of Machines,” CAMWS St. Louis, April 5.
2024
“Pro scaevum et grande ingenium doloris. Poliziano on Bodies Falling Apart,” Aesthetics of Illness Conference, University of Patras, February 11 (online)
2022
“The Intertextual Body – Neo-Latin Disease Narratives,” Center for Medical Humanities & Social Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, April 1.
Society for Ancient Medicine & Pharmacology
I joined the executive board of SAM in 2024. My main project there is to write a new monthly newsletter in an attempt to create a new international hub for everything Ancient Medicine. We currently have 500 members worldwide and are steadily growing!
If you want to become one of them and join our mailing list to receive our monthly newsletter click here.
Cosmic Visions
Since 2023, I am engaged in the Cosmic Visions project, a joint research initiative, funded by a JHU Discovery Award (2022) and the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute (JHU) that is working in collaboration with the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). We are trying to think about the ramifications and possible uses of the amazing data emerging from the James Webb Space Telescope for the humanities. I am responsible for managing the website and public outreach.
We have an annual conference and recently hosted an art competition for local high school students:
Alexander Grass Humanities Institute – Research Fellow, 2024/2025
In Fall 2024, I am joining the AGHI at Johns Hopkins University on a research fellowship to collaborate with colleagues from a wide range of academic backgrounds and work on my dissertation project Rome & the Crises of Creativity.
Dean’s Teaching Fellowship, 2023
In Fall 2023, I won a Dean’s Teaching fellowship to teach a class on the history of biology titled “Ancient Genetics.”
We trace ideas around “Genetics” (a mixture of topics surrounding the nature of life, procreation, heredity, embryology, growth) down to some of the earliest written records and follow them through time – from the Pre-Socratics to 1900. We study the many historical answers to the question “what is life and where does it come from?”
The exploration of this fundamental human question has often been on a collision course with many other social concepts and conditions: social privilege, religion, race, sex & gender, but has never emerged separately from them, whether in antiquity or in our own “scientific” age. (see under Teaching for a syllabus).
Center for Medical Humanities & Social Medicine, 2021/22
Before joining the Society for Ancient Medicine, I was a Graduate Research Fellow at Johns Hopkins’ CMHSM to collaborate with a group of graduate students from all kinds of disciplines, discussing work in progress, and organizing a small conference.
The Center’s programs investigate: Medicine, Science, and Humanities; Critical Global Health Studies; Reproduction, Health, and Society; Technology, Data, and Health; Race, Racism, and Health; Social Medicine in Medical Education; and Arts, Humanities, and Health.
Yanneck Wiegers 