After a long journey, my PhD dissertation is finally finished, approved, and printed, albeit only in a very small, privately published run. The only thing that now stands between me and my doctorate is the public defence on Tuesday, 20 June 2017, 2 pm sharp, at the Agnietenkapel in the heart of Amsterdam. And just to make that very clear: ‘public’ means that everybody is welcome to attend. If you’re still hesitating, you might want to read on to get a better idea of what my book is all about.
It’s been eerily quiet around here for too long! Many things have happened since I ceased posting more regularly, and perhaps I’ll find time to dwell on some of them in the future. Among other things, I have devoted much of my time to intensive manuscript research, which has come to be defining for my PhD thesis. But for now, I would like to advertise the all-new call for papers for this year’s postgraduate workshop of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC). I’m particularly thrilled about the keynote lecturers and the collaboration with ARTECHNE at Utrecht University…
This year’s conference season was brief but intense for me, with conferences back to back in London and Görlitz. Instead of writing about my own talks, I’ve decided to highlight a few papers by other scholars that I particularly enjoyed. This post will give you a glimpse of some of the debates on prophecy and astrology and, particularly, more or less sane prophets I learnt about while participating in the ‘Revisiting Early Modern Prophecies’ conference at Goldsmiths, University of London, convened by Ariel Hessayon and Lionel Laborie. My selection is, of course, highly subjective, and my hazy memory and notes might sometimes blur the line between the actual talks and the thought processes they sparked off. But that should rather be seen as a compliment to the speaker, shouldn’t it?
PRAELUDIA MICROCOSMICA 