Colloquium Series

Colloquium Series

Our Colloquium Series features talks by researchers on our campus and beyond. Stop by for the opportunity to learn about current research in the history and philosophy of science and medicine. Presentations are typically followed by questions and discussion.

Colloquium talk with Randal Beer, Provost Professor in Luddy School of Informatics and Computing and in the Cognitive Science Program. 

Spring 2026

 

January 22nd, 2026

Aina Puce

Eleanor Cox Riggs Professor Psychological & Brain Sciences. Indiana University

Title: TBD

Time: 4:00 pm Location: BH 803

 

January 29th, 2026

Jamie Shaw

Post-Doctoral Fellow. University of Toronto Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science and Technology. 

Title: TBD

Time: 4:00 pm

Location: BH 803

 

Feburary 26th, 2026

Tim Brown

Assistant Professor, Department of Bioethics and Humanitites. University of Washington
Title: TBD
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: Zoom

 

March 5th, 2026

Erich Reck

Professor of Philosophy. University of California, Riverside
Title: TBD
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: BH 803

 

April 2nd, 2026

Sarah Gregg

Associate Professor of History. University of Indiana
Title: TBD
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: BH 803

Past Talks

September 25th, 2025

2025 Gierie Lecture. 

Michael Silberstein 

Elizabethtown College. Professor of Philosophy.

Professor of Science, Society, and Technology.

Director of the Cognitive Science Program.

Core Faculty Member in the Neuroscience Program.

School of Engineering and Computer Science.

Title: Contextual Emergence and the Future of Cognitive Science. 

Time: 4:00 PM Location: Ballantine Hall 803

 

October 16th, 2025

David Ludwig

Associate Professor Wageningen University.

Title: What is Transdisciplinary Philosophy of Science? 

Time: 4:00pm Location: Ballantine Hall 803

 

October 30th, 2025

Melinda Fagan

HPSC Alumni 2007. Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah, where she holds the Sterling M. McMurrin Chair.

Title: Explanatory Particularism in Scientific Practice

Time: 2:00 pm Location: Ballantine Hall 803

 

Anita Guerrini

A joint colloqium with The IU Renaissance Studies program.

HPSC alumni Anita Guerrini. Horning Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at Oregon State University

Title: The Sensuous Anatomist: William Harvey and the Five Senses

Time: 4:00 pm Location: Gayle Karch Cook Center, Maxwell Hall. 

The lecture will be followed by a roundtable with IU scholars Domenico Bertoloni Meli (History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine), Alison Calhoun (French and Italian), and Leanna York (Musicology), followed by a Q&A and a reception.

November 6th, 2025

2025 Coffa Lecture.

Holly Andersen

Professor of Philosophy Simon Fraser University.

Title: Pragmatism, Measurement, and the Value-free Ideal

Time: 4:00 pm

Location: Ballantine Hall 803

January 16th, 2025  

Anthony Beavers
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Evansville
Affiliated Faculty, Cognitive Science at Indiana University
Title: Network Idealizations and the Prospect of an Associationist Phenomenology
Time: 4:00 PM 
Location: BH 803

March 13th, 2025 

Randall Beer 
Indiana University 
Provost Professor in Luddy School of Informatics and Computing
Provost Professor in the Cognitive Science Program
Title: Vivan Las Revoluciones! - A Personal Perspective on the Birth of 4E Cognition: 1985-1995
Time: 4:00pm

March 27th, 2025

Jessica O' Reilly 
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
International Studies
Indiana University Bloomington
Title: Making Models Make Sense: bridging epistemic and technical differences in IPCC Working Groups
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: BH 803

April 3rd, 2025

Banu Subramaniam
Wellesley College
Luella LaMer Professor of Women's and Gender Studies
Title: Queering Global Flora: Plant Lives in the Afterlives of Empire
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: Dogwood Room Indiana Memorial Union

April 17, 2025

24-25 Westfall Lecture 
Daniel Margocsy 
University of Cambridge
Professor in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine
Title: Appropriations: Plagiarism and Resource Extraction in the Dutch East India Company's World c. 1670-1730.
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: BH 803

April 24th, 2025

24-25 Giere Memorial Lecture  
Carl Craver
Washington University in St. Louis
Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology
Title: Lesions and Persons: Decomposition and Localization in the Space of Reasons
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803
Sept 19th, 2024: Hanson Prize Lecture, Ann Campbell, Indiana University Bloomington, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m Title : Title: Mechanism, Mountains, and Moral Philosophy: James Hutton, Adam Smith, and the Economy of Nature
October 3rd, 2024: Laura Foster, Indiana University Bloomington, Ballantine Hall, p.m Title: Vegetal AI Ethics: Plant Beings, Gendered Relations, and the Governing Of Artificial Intelligence
October 10th, 2024: Gary Ebbs, Indiana University Bloomington, Ballantine Hall Title Title: Quine on Observation Sentences: A Case Study of the Method of Explication
October 31st, 2024: George Reisch, Independent Scholar, Chicago, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m Title  On The Road to * The Structure of Scientific Revolutions* with Philipp Frank"
 November 7th, 2024: Justin Wood, Indiana University Bloomington, Ballantine Hall 4:00 p.m Title:  Radical Empiricism: The Origins of Knowledge as a Mini-Evolution
December 5th, 2024: Paul Teller, University of California Davis, Ballantine Hall 4:00 p.m Title:  
Language and the Complexity of the World: A Prolegomenon to Theorizing Vagueness
January 16th: Evan Ragland, University of Notre Dame, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title 
 Bodies, Causes, and Diseases: Toward a History of Premodern Medical Theory and Practice Beyond the Humors
Februrary 22, 2024: Caterina Agostini, Indiana University Bloomington, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Tile: Charting the Cosmos: Exploring Galileo’s Correspondence on Astronomy 
March 28, 2024 George Elliott, Purdue University Northwest, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title:  Saltbox Science: Alchemy, Medicine, and the Household in English Colonial America
April 4, 2024: Julian Reiss, Johannes Kepler University, Ballantine Hall 4:00 p.m, Title: Adversarial Collaboration: Snake Oil or Cure-all?
April 10, 2024: Scott Mandelbrote, University of Cambridge, Ballantine Hall 4:00 p.m, Title: Lost for Three Hundred Years: Identifying and Explaining an Isaac Newton Notebook
April 18, 2024: Tara Nummedal, Brown University, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: The Männel is a root; it is said to be called an Alraune.” Mandrake, Money, and Medicine in a Saxon Mining Town
September 28, 2023: Clare Griffin, Indiana University Bloomington: Ballantine Hall, 4:00 pm, Title: War Wounds: Weapons, Wounds, and Russian Imperialism in the Seventeenth and Twenty-First Centuries
October 5, 2023: Dieter Hoffmann, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: Farm Hall and the Allies' fear of the German atomic bomb
October 26, 2023: John Norton, University of Pittsburgh, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title:  The Material Theory of Induction
November 16, 2023: Staša Milojević, Indiana University Bloomington, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: Science as an engine of progress and the progress of science
November 30, 2023: Andrew Goldman, Indiana University Bloomington, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: Neuroscience in Music Research: Critical Challenges and Contributions
December 7, 2023: Brian Burkhart, University of Oklahoma, Ballantine Hall 4:00 p.m, Title: Land and Kinship in Indigenous Environmental and Health Sciences
 
January 26: 2023, Colin Elliot, Indiana University, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: Rethinking the Antonine Plague
February 9: 2023, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Univerity of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, SSRC Grand Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title:  Post-Truth Era or New Regime of Veridiction in Technoscience?
March 23, 2023: Bennett Holman, Yonsei University, Ballantine Hall, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: The New Demarcation Problem 
April 6, 2023: Andrea Sullivan Clarke, University of Windsor, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: Strategic Ignorance and Three Objections Involving Indigenous Epistemology
April 13th, 2023: Margaret Schabas, The University of British Columbia, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: All But in Name: Historical and Philosophical Reflections on the Theory of Human Capital. 
April 20, 2023: Nick Wilding, Georgia State University, Ballantine Hall 4:00 p.m., Title:  All But in Name: Historical and Philosophical Reflections on the Theory of Human Capital.
September 2, 2022: Angela Potochnik, University of Cincinnati, Woodburn Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: Truth and Reality: How to Be a Scientific Realist Without Believing Scientific Theories Are True 
September 22, 2022: Lauren Ross, University of California, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: Causal diversity: Capturing distinctions among causation
Septemeber 27, 2022: Alison Wylie, University of British Columbia, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: Critical Genealogies: Collaborative Archaeology in Settler-colonial Contexts
October 13, 2022: Jame Strick, Franklin and Marshall College, Woodburn Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: Sex, Lies and Bookburning: Wilhelm Reich and the US Food and Drug Administration
October 27, 2022: Siyu Yao, Indiana University, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m Title: Excavation in the Sky: Historical Inference in Astronomy
November 3, 2022: Fabrizio Baldasssarri, Indiana University, Ballantine Hall, Title: Of Plants and Books: Pre-Modern Experimentation with Plants from Cesalpino to Grew
January 27, 2022: Elana Rakoff, Indiana University Bloomington, Zoom Lecture, Title:  Competition and Consensus: The Strange Evolution of Dermatological Nosologies, from Willan and Bateman to von Hebra
February 17, 2022: Carl Weinberg, Indiana University, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: The K-bomb: Evolution, Anticommunism, and the 1953 Kinsey Report on Female Sexuality
Februrary 24, 2022: Lawrence Principe, John Hopkins, Ballantine Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: The K-bomb: Evolution, Anticommunism, and the 1953 Kinsey Report on Female Sexuality
March 10, 2022: John Rudolph, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Zoom lecture, 4:00 p.m, Title: The Scientific Method in American Science Education
April 4, 2022: Hasok Chang, University of Cambridge, Woodburn Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: Title: Epistemic Iteration Revisited: The Achievement of Precision in Concepts and Methods
April 21, 2022: Pamela Smith, Columbia University, Woodburn Hall, 4:00 p.m, Title: Craft Practice and Rigor: Experiences and Reflections from the Making and Knowing Project
September 30, 2021: Prof. Sabina Leonelli, University of Exeter, UK, Ballantine Hall 4:00 pm Title: Can - and should - philosophy help to “open” science?
October 7, 2021: HANSON PRESENTATION: Dan Li, Indiana University. Ballantine Hall, 4:00 pm, Title: The Case of the Missing Tree Ring Hypothesis
October 14, 2021: GIERE LECTURE. Prof. Michela Massimi, University of Edinburgh, UK. Ballantine Hall, 4:00 pm Title: Perspectival realism, situated knowledge and multiculturalism in science
November 4, 2021: Prof. Elizabeth Schechter, Indiana University, Department of Philosophy and Cognitive Science Program. Ballantine Hall, 4:00 on, Title: Plurals and plural identity
November 18, 2021 WESTFALL LECTURE. Ballantine Hall, Prof. Christia Mercer, Columbia University, NYC. Ballantine Hall, 4:00 pm Title: Empowering History of Science
December 2, 2021
Dr. Kate MacCord, Arizona State University, School of Life Sciences & Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA. Ballantine Hall, Title: The Trouble with Germline: Using Integrated History and Philosophy to Explore a Problematic Assumption
December 9, 2021
Dr. Riana Betzler, Washington University in St. Louis. Ballantine Hall, 4:00 pm Title: The Science and Ethics of Empathy in Medical Practice
January 28, 2021: Claudia Cristalli, Indiana University, 4:30 pm, Title: The Philosophical Psychology of Charles S. Peirce. On the connection between perception, reason, and the logic of scientific inquiry
February 19, 2021: Professor Laura Franklin-Hall, NYU, 4:00 pm, Title: Genders as Historical Explanatory Kinds
February 25, 2021: Coffa Lecture, Professor Yemima Ben-Menahem, Hebrew University, 12:00 pm, Title: Lawlessness and Reduction
March 11, 2021: Professor Stephen Downes, University of Utah, 4:30 pm, Title: A History of the Heritability Coefficient Applied to Humans
March 18, 2021: Professor John Bickle, Mississippi State University, 4:30 pm, Title: Tinkering in the Lab
March 25, 2021: Professor Melinda Fagan, University of Utah, 4:30 pm, Title: Explanatory Particularism and Interdisciplinary Understanding
Cancelled: April 8, 2021: Westfall Lecture, Professor Christia Mercer, Columbia University, 4:30 pm, Title: TBA
April 15, 2021: Professor Anya Plutynski, Washington University St Louis, 4:30 pm, Title: On Adaptation in Mental Disorders & Somatic Disease: Why Defend a Pluralist View?
April 22, 2021: Professor Janella Baxter, Washington University St Louis, 4:30 pm, Title: Synthetic Biology is Changing Things – Just not in the Way You (Might) Think
April 29, 2021: Dr. Juliette Ferry-Danini, University of Toronto, 4:30 pm, Title: Why you have never heard of the drug Spasfon and what it can tell us about medicine
September 10, 2020: Evan Arnet, Indiana University, Title: Conwy Lloyd Morgan, Methodology, and the Origins of Comparative Psychology
September 12, 2020: Becca Jackson, Indiana University, 4:30pm, Title: “The Uncertain Method of Drops”: How a Non-uniform Fluid Unit Survived the Century of Standardization
January 23, 2020: Professor Rebecca Lave, Indiana University, Sycamore Hall 105, 4:00 p.m., Title: Can we save nature by selling it?
February 20, 2020 : Professor John Huss, University of Akron, Sycamore Hall 105, 4:00 p.m., Title: Mass Extinction, Narrative Closure, and Evidence 
February 27, 2020 : Professor Stuart Glennan, Butler University, Sycamore Hall 105, 4:00 p.m., Title: The Many Mechanisms of Natural Selection
March 5, 2020: Professor Stasa Milojevic, Indiana University, Sycamore Hall 105, 4:00 p.m., Title: Quantitative Studies of Science
March 12, 2020 : Greg Lusk, Michigan State University, Sycamore Hall 105, 4:00 pm., Title: Data for Users: A Democratic Account of Values in Science
Cancelled: March 30, 2020: Westfall Lecture, Professor Michael Stolberg, University of Würzburg, Hoagy Carmichael Room (Morrison Hall 006), 4:00 p.m., Title: Learned Medical Practice in the Sixteenth Century
Cancelled: April 2, 2020 : Professor Gunther Jikeli, Indiana University, Sycamore Hall 105, 4:00 pm., Title: How to Remember Peenemünde?
Cancelled: April 9, 2020 : Coffa Lecture, Professor Alison Wylie, University of British Columbia, Hoagy Carmichael Room (Morrison Hall 006), 4:00 pm., Title: Complementary History and Philosophy of Science: Histories of Archaeology In and For Practice
October 30, 2019: Continuity, Improvement, & Innovation in Experimental Methodology, Professor Hanne Andersen, Professor Uljana Feest, Professor Karin Nickelsen, Professor Raphael School, Professor Jackie Sullivan, Professor Andrea Woody, Woodburn Hall 200, Event Program 
To view photos from the workshop click here.
October 26, 2019: Women's Leadership Conference, Professor Helen Longino, Stanford University, Social Science and Research Commons, Event Program.
To view photos from the conference click here.