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Archiving empire with religious studies’ Megan Robb
Three people stand in front of Cohen Hall

Professor Megan Robb (center) worked with a team of students including Michael Goerlitz (left) and Juliana Lu (right) to create a digital archive centered on Elizabeth Sharaf-un-Nisa, an 18th-century Mughal woman who cohabited with a European man working for the East India Company, bearing children, marrying him, and ultimately living out the remainder of her life in England. 

Archiving empire with religious studies’ Megan Robb

A long-unseen archive centered on an 18th-century Mughal woman will soon be publicly accessible, thanks to the work of religious studies professor Megan Robb of the School of Arts & Sciences and a team of Penn students.

Kristina Linnea García

Harun Küçük brings science, philosophy, and history to the Middle East Center
Hasan Küçük stands with his hands in his jeans pockets in front of the wooden double doors and red brick facade of Fisher-Bennett Hall

Harun Küçük, a historian of early modern Ottoman science, is the new faculty director at the Middle East Center. 

Harun Küçük brings science, philosophy, and history to the Middle East Center

The newly appointed faculty director says his aim “first and foremost is to maintain all the good things that the Center’s already doing.”

Kristen de Groot

Daniel Morales-Armstrong’s ‘Inclusive City’
Masked adults sit four to a table with papers and folders during a brainstorming session.

Participants and Inclusive City students facilitate charrette brainstorming sessions. (Image: OMNIA)

Daniel Morales-Armstrong’s ‘Inclusive City’

The William Fontaine Fellow of Africana Studies and History helms a course designed to lead students in a collaborative engagement with a local Philadelphian community.

Blake Cole

African American in the ‘raceless’ Soviet Union
Person in glasses miles at the camera with green trees behind

African American in the ‘raceless’ Soviet Union

History Ph.D. candidate Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon’s work looks at how the African American experience in the Soviet Union shaped Black identity and how the presence of people of color shaped Soviet understandings of race.

Kristen de Groot

Metal artifacts in Southeast Asia challenge long-held archaeological theory
A photo of a metal artifact in the shape of a spear on a black background. In the foreground is a scale that runs from 0 to 5 cm.

An individual can create a stone tool or a pot without assistance, but creating a metal tool like the spear here is a group endeavor—and a complex one. Artifacts like this found in Thailand showed that such metal technology could be developed and exchanged using an economic model based on communities making decisions about how to participate in regional exchange systems. (Image: The Ban Chiang Project)

  • Q&A

    • Metal artifacts in Southeast Asia challenge long-held archaeological theory

    According to the Penn Museum’s Joyce White and Elizabeth Hamilton, prehistoric communities, rather than the ruling elites, in Thailand were the deciders in how to use metal resources.

    Michele W. Berger

    Unexpected finds bring fresh excitement to the archives
    A table in the archives office with an old painting, historic newspaper clippings, and old pamphlets from Penn Medicine archives.

    Image: Penn Medicine News

    Unexpected finds bring fresh excitement to the archives

    Stacey C. Peeples’ discovery of a trove of historic papers, newspaper clippings, and various ephemera adds to the rich history she curates as lead archivist at Pennsylvania Hospital.

    From Penn Medicine News

    100 years of insulin
    insulin lab

    Homepage image: Laboratory on the University of Toronto campus where Banting and Best carried out some of their research on insulin. (Image: Courtesy of Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto)

    100 years of insulin

    On July 27, 1921, Canadian doctors Frederick Banting and Charles Best successfully isolated the hormone insulin, one of the most important breakthroughs in treating diabetes. Experts from around the University share their thoughts on the medical triumph on the 100th anniversary.

    Kristen de Groot

    Afro-Cubans come out in droves to protest government

    Afro-Cubans come out in droves to protest government

    Amalia Dache of the Graduate School of Education spoke about the history of racial disparities and injustices in Cuba. “When we're thinking about global solidarity with Black people, especially right now, we need all hands on deck,” she said.

    Fear of a Black Cuban planet

    Fear of a Black Cuban planet

    Amalia Dache of the Graduate School of Education was interviewed about Cuba’s recent uprisings and its long history of Black resistance. In the 1960s, the Communist government said it would eradicate racism. “It’s counterrevolutionary to talk about Black history in Cuba, to engage Black history,” she said.