Visiting Speakers

Lorraine Daston has published on a wide range of topics in the history of science, including the history of probability and statistics, wonders in early modern science, the emergence of the scientific fact, scientific models, objects of scientific inquiry, the moral authority of nature, and the history of scientific objectivity. She is the Director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin.

Meghan Daum is the author of a new collection of original essays The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion. She is also the author of the essay collection My Misspent Youth, the novel The Quality of Life Report, and Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House, a memoir. Since 2005, she has been an opinion columnist at The Los Angeles Times, covering cultural and political topics. Meghan has written for numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, and Vogue.

John A. Davis is Emiliana Pasca Noether Chair in Modern Italian History at the University of Connecticut, and a leading authority on the history of modern Italy. He has published widely on Italian history since the eighteenth century, including the prizewinning Naples and Napoleon: Southern Italy and the European Revolutions, 1780–1​860. 

Beatrice A. de Graaf is Professor for the History of International Relations and Global Governance at Utrecht University.

Carlos de la Torre is professor of Sociology and Director of International Studies at the University of Kentucky Lexington. 

Abram de Swaan (Amsterdam, 1942) is emeritus distinguished research professor of social science at the University of Amsterdam and presently Adjunct Professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

Sarah Demers is an Associate Professor of physics at Yale University. She works on the ATLAS experiment at CERN and is particularly interested in using the signature of one of the standard model particles, the tau lepton, as a probe for new physics. She collaborates with Emily Coates, Lecturer in Theater Studiues at Yale University, on interdisciplinary work involving the connections between science and the arts.

Christine Desan teaches about the international monetary system, the constitutional law of money, constitutional history, political economy, and legal theory. She is the co-founder of Harvard’s Program on the Study of Capitalism, an interdisciplinary project that brings together classes, resources, research funds, and advising aimed at exploring that topic.