Leib Celnik
Leib holds a bachelor’s degree in the history of science and art history from Harvard University and an MPhil in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the history of art conservation, with his master’s dissertation focusing on the importation of synthetic dyes used in eighteenth-century Japanese woodblock prints, and his undergraduate thesis focusing on the history of analyses of Greco-Roman marble sculpture. Leib is broadly interested in the history of the physical sciences, museum studies, and material culture studies.
Hannah Haegeland
Hannah Haegeland studies military science and technologies in modern South Asia. She came to Hopkins to wrestle with questions that started forming during her decade holding research and teaching positions related to the history and security of the subcontinent in Albuquerque, Washington, DC, Seattle, New Delhi, and Kathmandu. Hannah has an MA in South Asia Studies from the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, and a BA in History and English Literature from Concordia College, Moorhead
Marlis Hinckley
Marlis holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, where she studied History of Science with a certificate in Spanish Literature, and an MPhil in Medieval History from the University of Cambridge. She is interested in medieval and early modern natural philosophy, as well as the history of alchemy, botany, and beekeeping.
Andrew Kishuni
Andrew Kishuni holds a B.A. in History and Global Peace & Security Studies and an M.A. in History from the University of Central Florida. Andrew researches the political history of the U.S. chemical and biological weapons program from World War I to the Nixon administration. His research interests include U.S. foreign relations, histories of infectious disease, and biodefense policy. He has also written on the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic in the American South.
Zeynep Kuleli
Zeynep received her BA in archaeology and history of art from Bilkent University and her MA in history of science from FSMV University. Her master’s thesis focused on Ibn al-Haytham’s Book of Optics and its influence throughout the history of mathematics. After coordinating the program of the School of Philosophy and History of Science (funded by ISTEV) for four years, she joined the history of science and technology program in 2018. Her research interests include the history of mathematics, knowledge networks in the early modern period, witchcraft and women’s studies.
Elliot Mertz
Elliot received his BA in History from the University of Chicago and his MA in European Studies from Yale University. His research centers on the role of epistemology in the application of received knowledge. Particularly, he is interested in how textual interpretations and laboratory practices of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century German and English chymists shaped, and were in turn shaped by, their understandings of the systematic metaphysics of matter.
Urna Mukherjee
Urna received her BA(Hons) in English from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, and MA and MPhil from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has worked on voyage narratives of the India run during the British Colonial period, undertaking a broad survey of the Colonial anxieties of imagining, inscribing and regulating the Indian Ocean from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Urna’s interests include changing technologies of maritime navigation and sailing, and the relations between such technological transformations and the operative, discursive and narrative practices involving navigation, exploration and administration of the oceans in the backdrop of global colonial empires.
Douwe Schipper
Douwe received his BA (hons) in history and religion studies from Utrecht University’s University College Roosevelt (2016), his MSc in History and Philosophy of Science from Utrecht University (2018), and his MA in North American Studies from Leiden University (2019). He is primarily interested the technological and social history of urban transportation infrastructure. His current work compares the history of highways in different European and North American cities in the second half of the twentieth century.
Shiyi Xiang
Shiyi Xiang holds a BA in Chinese Classics from Renmin University of China, an MA in Liberal Studies from Duke University, and an MA in East Asian History from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Shiyi’s research interests focus on agriculture and botanical studies in modern East Asia, particularly in China and Japan, with a focus on the history of biology.
Melody Xu
Melody received her BA from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where she studied the history and philosophy of intelligence, as well as science and technology studies. Before starting her graduate studies at Johns Hopkins, she coordinated a NIH-funded, multi-site developmental science research initiative at NYU for four years and received two Fulbright independent research awards (China 2020-21 and United Kingdom 2021-2022) for separate projects on the history of artificial intelligence. Melody’s research interests include the history of psychology, developmental science, and AI. In particular, she is interested in exploring analogies and thematic overlaps across research on human and artificial intelligence.