The Renaissance Skin project has officially come to a close in December 2022 and in this final news item we look back at some of the project’s achievements and look forward to the future, including Evelyn Welch’s forthcoming monograph Renaissance Skin.
The beginnings of Renaissance Skin were as a tantalising aspect of the HERA-funded ‘Fashioning the Early Modern project’, …
We celebrated 5 years of the Renaissance Skin project on the 8th & 9th June 2022, with a two-day conference welcoming back many old friends who have shaped the project over the years. The project is officially coming to a close in September this year, so we were pleased to have the opportunity to hold one last big event to …
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The Renaissance Skin team were very pleased to attend the Renaissance Society of America’s annual meeting in Dublin (Wednesday 30 March – Saturday 2 April 2022). Our Renaissance Skin panel and roundtable session (organised by Sarah Cockram) took place back-to-back on Thursday morning, and it was wonderful to see an excellent turnout for both, with many old friends and new …
Renaissance Skin invites early career researchers to give five-minute ‘lighting talks’ during our project's closing conference.
Over the past five years, Renaissance Skin has studied the wide range of ways in which skin, both animal and human, was conceptualised and used in Europe between …
As the year draws to a close, we look back at a productive time for Renaissance Skin and ahead to the project’s concluding months, with our closing conference taking place in June 2022. It has been a busy year, with reading groups, workshops and events, conference attendances, and the curation and launch of an exciting exhibition.
We kicked off the …
Visible Skin: Rediscovering the Renaissance through Black Portraiture, King’s outdoor exhibition on the Strand, has been extended until 18 February 2022 due to popular demand.
Part of the launch programme for Strand/Aldwych, a new public space in London, Visible Skin, which showcases the work of artist Peter Brathwaite in collaboration with King’s Renaissance Skin research project, has been seen …
The Renaissance Skin project is very excited to announce a new exhibition: 'Visible Skin: Rediscovering the Renaissance through Black Portraiture', running on King's College London's Strand campus and on our webpages here. Created in collaboration with King's Culture.
The launch of the exhibition was celebrated on 1 October in a special Q&A event with Peter Brathwaite and Farah Karim-Cooper …
For the Renaissance Skin project and indeed the rest of the world, 2020 was a year of cancelled plans and adaptation. The beginning of the year was full of preparation and hope for research trips to come, all of which had to be cancelled come March. Whilst the effects of Covid-19 were sadly detrimental to the archival work planned (including …
Renaissance Skin's Kathleen Walker-Meikle is currently a Wellcome Trust Secondment Fellow at the V&A. Kathleen began her secondment in January 2020, and remains at the V&A until the end of the year. Kathleen has given an update of her secondment:
''As a Wellcome Trust Secondment Fellow at the V&A, I bring a medical humanities perspective on objects in the collection …
In May 2020, Sebestian Kroupa was invited to speak on the Global History Podcast, a podcast exploring cross-cultural encounters in the early modern world. Sebestian speaks about his research on the Bohemian Jesuit pharmacist Georg Joseph Kamel, discussing the global histories of science and medicine in the early modern Philippines.
You can listen to Sebestian's podcast by visiting the Global …
For our reading group on 1 May 2020, we had the pleasure of welcoming Dr Katherine Dauge-Roth from Bowdoin College, who discussed her recent book, Signing the Body: Marks on Skin in Early Modern France. The session, which took place on Zoom in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, was attended by around 30 scholars from a broad variety of …
In February 2020 Hannah Murphy contributed a blog to the History Workshop, in which she asks the question 'When did skin colour matter in early modern Europe?'
You can read Hannah's piece here on the History Workshop's website.
Image: From Nehemiah Grew, Philosophical Transactions (1684). Wellcome Collection.
Many congratulations go to Renaissance Skin's Sebestian Kroupa, who has been awarded with The Fondazione Comel - Institutio Santoriana and the Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR)'s Santorio Award for Excellence in Research. Sebestian has received the award for his PhD thesis Georg Joseph Kamel (1661–1706): A Jesuit Pharmacist at the Frontiers …
The calendar year got off to a busy start for us, with no less than seven conference papers in three months. We began at Exeter, where the Centre for Medical History generously hosted the entire team in a mini-symposium dedicated to Renaissance Skin. As well as presentations by Evelyn Welch, Hannah Murphy, Kathleen Walker Meikle and Paolo Savoia, we were …
The Renaissance Skin team headed to Toronto in balmy March as locals cheerfully skated on the outdoor ice rink outside the conference venue for the Renaissance Society of America’s annual meeting (17-19th March 2019).
The Renaissance Skin panel was scheduled as one of the second sessions of the last day (Tuesday). Since Hannah could not be there, our colleague …
Dinner on the first night in Bologna
In June 2018, the whole Renaissance Skin team visited Bologna, Italy for a group research trip. Over 2 days we packed in a lot of culture, walking, and importantly, food! The visit was meticulously planned by Natasha and Paolo (Bologna resident), and true to our foodie ambitions we began at Osteria Santa Caterina …
The Polyphony is a web platform for the medical humanities hosted by the Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University. It invites conversations in the field and we are delighted that have chosen to showcase our recent workshop 'Artisans of the Surface in Early Modern Europe, 1450-1750'. In this piece, Paolo discusses what prompted him to convene this …
The Renaissance Skin team had a busy start to the summer and we continued in our efforts regarding material things by visiting the British Museum (BM) on 3 July. The trip was first prompted by Juliet’s interest in thimbles, as she embarks on her research to uncover ways in which the human body was protected in the early modern period. …
At the end of August, Kathleen attended a three-day course at the School of Historical Dress on traditional felt-making techniques tutored by Rachel Frost. Here, she tells us all about it.
The course focused on wool felting in early modern Britain, where the manufacture was focused on the hat trade. Felt is the oldest form of textile and consists of …
The seventeenth-century painting ‘Sausage Making’ by the Flemish artist David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690) sent the Renaissance Skin team on a mission to understand how animal skins and casings were stuffed and cooked in the early modern period. The painting, part of the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, depicts an interior scene with a young woman preparing sausages …
Within our research we are trying to incorporate the many varied types of animal skin, thinking about how they were used and exploited in the early modern period. A museum dedicated to all things leather is the obvious place to start. And so on 18 June 2018, the whole team headed to Northampton for a visit to the National Leather …
Dr Jola Pellumbi attended our first conference 'The Porous Body in Early Modern Europe' on 30 November-1 December 2017. Her review of the event was published in June 2018 in The Court Historian.
Jola Pellumbi, 'Dissecting Early Modern Skin', The Court Historian 23(1), pp.80-1
Pellumbi sums up the conference …
Our workshop 'Uncovering the Animal: Skin, Fur, Feathers 1450-1700' held on 29 June 2018 at King's College London was attended by a range of scholars from a variety of disciplines. Papers covered subjects from pangolins and nautilus shells to feathers (as used in the East and West), shagreen, and fur. Those in attendance contributed to valuable discussions about the range …
Following on from her recent visit to Australia, Evelyn has written a post for the Histories of Emotion blog entitled Skin Deep. It summarises changing notions of the skin in the early modern period.
The Histories of Emotion brings together a group of research associates working in the humanities in Australia, as part of the Australian Research Council’s Centre …
Perth Medieval and Renaissance Group and the University of Western Australia for Medieval and Early Modern Studies are holding their annual conference on 13 October 2018 on Skin in Medieval and Early Modern Worlds.
The keynote speaker is Dr Lisa Beaven (La Trobe University) speaking on 'Living Flesh: Splendor, Sex and Sickness on the Surface of the Skin'.
They …
On 30 November and 1 December 2017, we held our first conference at King’s College London. Featuring 18 speakers from Germany, Australia, and across the UK, plus two keynote lectures from Thomas W. Laqueur (Berkeley) and Anita Guerrini (Oregon), this conference considered the broad dimensions of porous bodies in the early modern period.
Listen to Evelyn Welch as she discusses …
On 15 February 2018, Natasha visited the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia and was treated to a behind-the-scenes exploration of this intriguing museum and its collections.
Appropriately, the strapline for Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum is ‘Disturbingly Informed’ and I cannot think of a more suitable term to sum up a visit to this museum. Opened on its original site in 1863, thanks …
Evelyn is currently in Australia, where early last week she gave a public lecture, Skin Deep, at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions based at the University of Melbourne. Evelyn has been busy promoting all things skin and at the end of the week she was invited to speak alongside dermatologist Rachel Manifold on Australia's …
On 15 February 2018, Kathleen gave a paper at the one-day conference 'From Past to Present: Natural Cosmetics Unwrapped', held at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in London. The conference was organised by a team of scholars from the Universities of Oxford, Glasgow, and Keele. Read her thoughts on the day below.
The premises of the Society are highly recommended for …
Kathleen returned to the University of Cambridge on Wednesday 8 November for the next CRASSH event in the Imaginative Things: Curious Objects 1400-2000 seminar series, with two speakers presenting on feathers.
Dr José Ramón Marcaida discussed birds-of-paradise and the global transmission of both dead specimens and knowledge about the bird in the early modern period. No living specimens of birds-of-paradise …
On Thursday 25 October, Kathleen and Juliet attended an afternoon seminar on leather as part of the series Imaginative Things: Curious Objects 1400-2000, held at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge.
Convened by Abigail Gomulkiewicz, the seminar brought together scholars to discuss items of material culture made of leather, which …
We were privileged to have a team visit to the Museum of London stores on Thursday 12 October 2017, ably guided by Curator Tim Long. Currently, we are trying to get to grips with how to integrate notions of animal skin within our discourse. How animal and human skin are conceived in this period in different ways is significant, for …
The Renaissance Skin project came about through ideas that Evelyn Welch has been working on throughout her career, which has included research grants focusing on medical history and fashion, each with a strong emphasis on the importance of material culture within the early modern period. What started out to be only a small part of the HERA-funded Fashioning the Early …