Speaker Bios

Name: Steven Vanden Broecke

Biography:
Steven Vanden Broecke (PhD in History, K.U. Leuven, 2000) teaches early modern intellectual history and history of science at Ghent University (Belgium). His preferred research topics include the history of astrology and astronomy, history of knowledge and belief, history of the body and the passions, and history of demonology. The monograph on which he is currently working, approaches the history of European astrology between c. 1300 and 1700 CE as the history of a perennially changing practice of self-care and self-transformation. Recent work includes a critical edition of the oldest preserved astrological autobiography (Henry Bate's Nativitas, 1280-1 CE), a study of Catholic Copernicanism after the Galileo trial of 1633, and a forthcoming edited volume on truth-making practices in early modern Catholicism.

Abstract Title: Astrology and political order in 17th-century France

Name: Karine Dilanian

Biography:
TBA

Abstract Title: Great conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn, eschatology of Moscow as the Third Rome and Ivan IV Grozny political propaganda

Name: Kim Harrer

Biography:
Kim Harrer has worked as an educator in several countries around the world and has always sought to incorporate the cosmos into what she teaches. She graduated with honors from the Metropolitan State University of Denver after completing her thesis 'The Literary Cosmos: Symbol, Metaphor, and Reflection in the Medieval Universe'. She believes whole-heartedly that studying the cosmos and considering its existential implications breeds more empathy, compassion, and understanding. As a graduate student of the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology, she looks forward to continuing her exploration of the ways in which these existential implications are expressed in humanity and how she can best communicate it to future students.

Abstract Title: Political Freedom and Subjugation in Puritan Astrology

Name: Darin Hayton

Biography:
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Abstract Title: Conrad Tockler's Astrological Aphorisms

Name: Polapat Jittivuthikan

Biography:
Polapat Jittivuthikan is a PhD candidate from the College of Religious Studies at Mahidol university, Thailand. His researches focus on Theverada Buddhism, psychology of religion and Thai folk religious beliefs. His academic endeavor in the study of religion stemmed from his own interests in religion, meditation and astrology.

Abstract Title: Jupiter and Saturn conjunction in Thai astrology; the eternal struggle of Thai governments

Name: R. Hakan Kirkoğlu

Biography:
R. Hakan Kırkoğlu holds two MA degrees in History (2016) and Economics (1991) from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. His recent MA thesis titled "Ilm-i Nücum and Its Role in the Ottoman Court during the Eighteenth Century" at the Boğaziçi University has also been published as a book. (2017) He graduated from Management Engineering Department in Istanbul Technical University (1988) As an astrologer and researcher, he has been interested in the history of astrology and science. His article "Ilm-i Nudjum and Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Court Politics" has been published in the the Journal of Culture and Cosmos, Vol.18, No:2 by Sophia Center Press

Abstract Title: The Sultan and his astrologer: The practice of astrology in the Ottoman court during the eighteenth century

Name: Ulla Koch

Biography:
Ulla Koch (Ph.D.). Assyriologist affiliated with the Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Her main fields of research are Mesopotamian divination, religion and literature. She has published and translated numerous primary cuneiform sources into English and Danish, including divinatory texts, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Babylonian epic of creation, Enuma Elish. She has written monographs and articles primarily on Mesopotamian divination and literature and has recently published a monograph on the 1st millennium Mesopotamian divinatory genres (Mesopotamian Divination Texts – Conversing with the Gods. 2015) Since 2004 she has worked with IT in the defense and health sectors thus demonstrating the never ceasing relevance of cuneiform studies.

Abstract Title: Jupiter and the Assyrian King

Name: David W. Pankenier

Biography:
David W. Pankenier, Professor of Chinese Emeritus, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA David Pankenier earned his Ph.D. in Asian Languages from Stanford University in 1983. He is an International Fellow in the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala, and member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Dr. Pankenier served on the Executive Committee of the International Conferences on the Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena (INSAP), the European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC) and the advisory board of the Journal of the History of Astronomy. The author of numerous articles and four books on ancient Chinese astronomy, astrology, chronology, and history, his latest book, Astrology and Cosmology in Early China: Conforming Earth to Heaven was published by Cambridge University Press in 2013.

Abstract Title: Medieval Chinese Planetary Astrology

Name: Eugeny Pchelov

Biography:
Pchelov E.V., PhD in History, associate Professor, head of Department of auxiliary historical sciences of Russian State University for Humanities, senior researcher of Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the author of the 900 published works, including 25 books, on Russian history, auxiliary historical sciences (historical chronology, heraldry, genealogy, etc.), cultural history and history of science, including the history of astronomy.

Abstract Title: Heraldic astronomy: dedications to monarchs on maps of the stellar sky

Name: Micah T. Ross

Biography:
Micah T. Ross studied Greek and Latin at Brown University in Providence, RI. In 2000, he earned a MA at the University of Toronto in Ancient Studies. In 2006, he received a PhD as the student of David Pingree.

Abstract Title: Persian Skies over China

Name: H. Darrel Rutkin

Biography:
With his PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from Indiana University, H Darrel Rutkin is a historian of science and philosophy specializing in the history of medieval, Renaissance and early modern astrology, ca. 1250-1800. His work focuses on astrology's numerous relationships to science, theology and magic within their relevant conceptual, institutional, confessional, socio-political and cultural contexts over the longue durée. Among many other questions, he is concerned to establish astrology’s centrality to the premodern Aristotelian-Ptolemaic-Galenic understanding of nature ca. 1250-1600 both conceptually and institutionally. He then uses these structures-especially the patterns of their teaching at the finest premodern universities-to reveal the complex patterns of how astrology was marginalized and ultimately removed from the map of legitimate knowledge and practice during the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment.

Among numerous other publications, he has recently completed volume I of his first monograph, Sapientia Astrologica: Astrology, Magic and Natural Knowledge, ca. 1250-1800, which appeared in 2019 in the series, "Archimedes: New Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology," Jed Z. Buchwald (ed), Dordrecht: Springer, 3 vols. Volume I is entitled, "Medieval Structures (1250-1500): Conceptual, Institutional, Socio-Political, Religous and Cultural." He is currently completing volume II, which is entitled: "Renaissance Structures (1450-1500): Continuities and Transformations," which deals primarily with Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. He has also co-edited Horoscopes and Public Spheres: Essays on the History of Astrology, with Günther Oestmann and Kocku von Stuckrad (Berlin, 2005). Two of his most recent publication are: "How to Accurately Account for Astrology's Marginalization in the History of Science and Culture: The Essential Importance of an Interpretive Framework," in a special issue of Early Science and Medicine edited by Hiro Hirai and Rienk Vermij, 23 (2018): 217-43. The other is: "Is Astrology a Type of Divination?: Thomas Aquinas, the Index of Prohibited Books and the Construction of a Legitimate Astrology in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance," International Journal of Divination and Prognostication 1 (2019): 36-74. He has also contributed to the Cambridge History of Science and the Harvard Companion to the Classical Tradition.

Abstract Title: Astrology and the Age of Aquarius: Great Conjunctions (Then and Now), Divine Providence and the Unfolding Transformations of Human History

Name: Shlomo Sela

Biography:
Shlomo Sela, Professor emeritus, Department of Jewish Thought, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

Abstract Title: Historical Astrology in the Rise of Medieval Hebrew Science (Abraham Bar Hiyya and Abraham Ibn Ezra)

Name: Octavia Sheepshanks

Biography:
Octavia Sheepshanks is a student of the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at the University of Wales Trinity St David and has a background in Philosophy. She is currently working on her thesis, which considers the notion of the moon as a sacred physical space in the context of the imminent mining of the moon’s resources. She lives in London and conducts her academic research at the Warburg Institute, within which she also works in the Numismatics Library. In an attempt to immerse herself in the history of astrology, she is at present attending a weekly reading group at the Institute on esoteric medieval texts in Arabic and Latin, despite not being remotely familiar with either language. In her non-academic life she enjoys attending Zumba classes and has enrolled in a half marathon at the beginning of May, a decision she currently regrets.

Abstract Title: Calling for a contemporary understanding of ‘Political Skies’