In this episode of the Asian Review of Books podcast, I discuss my new book Science on the Roof of the World: Empire and the Remaking of the Himalaya with Nicholas Ri Gordon (External Link)
In this episode of the #histsci podcast “Time to Eat the Dogs” with Michael Robinson, I discuss altitude sickness and travels in the Himalaya. (External Link)
Conference Papers and Talks
“The Himalaya as a Scale for Global Histories of Science, Empire and Environment,” Himalayan and Tibetan Studies Lecture Series, Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, 25 January 2023 (invited).
“Empire, Global Dis:connectivity and the Remaking of Environmental Categories in South and Central Asia,” Global Dis:connect Colloquium, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany, 13 December 2022 (invited).
“Mountain Humanities: Perspectives from the Himalaya,” Mountain Humanities Workshop, University of St Andrews, Scotland, 9 December 2022 (invited).
“The ‘Habitable Globe’ in Imperial Environmental Imaginaries of Central Asia,” European Society for Environmental History (ESEH), University of Bristol, UK, 7 July 2022.
“Empire on High: Mountains, Measurement and the ‘World Altitude Record’ in the Nineteenth Century,’ London Group of Historical Geographers Seminar, Institute for Historical Research (School of Advanced Study), University of London, UK, 25 January 2022.
“Breakdown, Dependency and ‘Failure’ in Imperial Exploration and Surveying: Notes from the Euphrates Expedition of 1835-7,” Discovering – Surveying – Ordering: Expeditions in the Long 19th Century, Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, Hamburg, Germany, 18 November 2021.
“Himalayan Mountaineering and Imperial Masculinity Before Everest”, Forging Masculinities Outdoors: Open-Air Experience and Homosociality in the Age of Empire (c. 1850-1950), ETH Zurich, Switzerland, 3 September 2021 (invited).
“Imperial Science and ‘Failure’: The Euphrates Expedition and the Route to India that Never Was,” British Society for the History of Science (BSHS) Virtual Conference, United Kingdom, 14 July 2021.
“‘Useless and incapable of being made useful’: Imperial Environmental Imaginaries and Indigenous Topographies of Afghanistan and the Pamirs,” Empire and Ecologies Symposium, University College Dublin, Ireland, 2 July 2021.
“Habitability, Uninhabitability and the Anthropocene”, Humanities for the Anthropocene, University College Cork, Ireland, 7 May 2021.
“Disciplines and the Politics of Deep Time,” Book Launch of Inscriptions of Nature by Pratik Chakrabarti, University of Manchester, UK, Online, 4 December 2020 (invited discussant).
“The ‘Habitable Globe’: Science, Geography and Environment in the Indian Sub-empire,” History Research Seminar, University College Dublin, Ireland, 13 November 2020 (invited).
“‘The Snow-line and the Arid-line’: Attempts to Scientifically Define the Limits of Habitability in Imperial Maps and Gazetteers of Central Asia,” 9th European Society for the History of Science (ESHS) Conference, Bologna, Italy, 2 September 2020 (online due to Covid-19).
“Imposing the Global: The Himalaya as a High-mountain ‘Type,’” Mountain ‘Global’: A Comparing Story of the Natural Sciences in the Mountains, 16-19th Centuries, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, 4 September 2020 (online due to Covid-19).
“#MakingMountainsGlobal,” BSHS Twitter Conference #BSHSGlobalHist, Online, 12 February 2020.
“Connection and Disconnection in the Global Scientific Imagining of the Himalaya,” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Utrecht, Netherlands, 25 July 2019.
“Global science and the making of mountains,” Vertical Extremes: Mountains and the Modern World, Cambridge Festival of Ideas, Cambridge, UK, 19 October 2018.
“Verticality and the global scientific imagining of the Himalaya, 1800-50,” International Congress of Historical Geographers, University of Warsaw, Poland, 19 July 2018.
“Thinking globally with mountains,” Global Mountains Conference, University of Cambridge, UK, 5 July 2018.
“Imagining a vertical globe: scientific practice in the Himalaya, 1800-50,” BSHS Postgraduate Conference, University of Manchester, UK, 6 April 2018.
“Instruments and insecurity: the imaginative, scientific and political constitution of the Himalaya as a high mountain frontier, 1800-50,” Global Frontiers, University of Tübingen, Germany, 16 November 2017.
“Altitude sickness and intermediaries in Himalayan exploration,” World History Workshop, Cambridge, UK, 18 October 2017.
“‘The motion of the blood is in fact a sort of living barometer’; Altitude sickness, poisonous plants and instrumentalised bodies the Himalaya, 1800-1850,” Cabinet of Natural History, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge, UK, 16 October 2017.
“Altitude, science and intermediaries in the exploration of the Himalaya, 1800-1850,” Göttingen Spirit Summerschool: The material culture of exploration and academic travel, 1700-1900, Lichtenberg-Kolleg, Göttingen, Germany, 25 July 2017.
“Science on the Roof of the World: Explorers, altitude sickness and local guides in the Himalaya, 1800-50,” Clareity Matters, Clare College, Cambridge, UK, 4 May 2017.
“Itineraries, bodies and instruments in the Himalaya, 1815-30,” Graduate Research Day, Faculty of History, Cambridge, UK, 16 February 2016.
“Surgeons, clergymen, local Informants and the production of knowledge at Fort St George, 1690-1720,” ANZAMEMS History Conference, University of Queensland, Australia, 14 July 2015.
“How to dissect an elephant in seventeenth century Madras,” QUALICUM Conference, Parksville, Canada, 2 February 2014.
Lachlan Fleetwood 