Guy Sechrist, PhD
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guysechrist.bsky.social
Guy Sechrist, PhD
@guysechrist.bsky.social
5.2K followers 450 following 420 posts
Early-modern history of science |

Commerce and Science
-Practical Maths
-Natural History

Uni. of Tennessee |
PhD Cambridge HPS
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guysechrist.bsky.social
Guy Sechrist, PhD @guysechrist.bsky.social · Oct 24
I am very excited to share my recent contribution to Nuncius: Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science. It was such a wonderful experience working with them to get this across the finish line. Very pleased with all of the coloured figures, too!
brill.com/view/journal...
guysechrist.bsky.social
May you all have a wonderful holiday!
November 24, 2025 at 9:40 PM
guysechrist.bsky.social
Determining the weight of tea chests for the VOC in Canton (now Guangzhou), China around 1770.

www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie...
November 24, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Reposted by Guy Sechrist, PhD
hpscasebooks.bsky.social
Join us tomorrow (29 October) for #casebookstherapy!!
@jakubochocinski.bsky.social @robralley.bsky.social @hagenilda.bsky.social
@laurenkassell.bsky.social
#histmed #astrology #histsci #earlymodern
October 28, 2025 at 10:02 AM
guysechrist.bsky.social
Writing advice I wasn't asked to give: Never finish a piece of writing in the evening. Leave a little bit you know you can add to the next day, in order to get you back in the flow state.
November 22, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by Guy Sechrist, PhD
howtobooks.bsky.social
Last week we ran a 2-day workshop at the Herzog August Bibliothek on the theme of 'Body-Health-Home', featuring a host of great papers, a 17th-century salad reconstruction, and, of course, some amazing how-to books 📚

Read more here: howtobook.hypotheses.org/4800

#bookhistory #library #workshop
November 20, 2025 at 3:17 PM
guysechrist.bsky.social
This is a truly wonderful book! I was fortunate to write a review for Archives of Natural History here: www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/...
November 18, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Guy Sechrist, PhD
medievaljay.bsky.social
The scale of the damage at the British Library is difficult to fathom from the outside. Working in the wreckage of the hack has made me even less sanguine about the digital age into which we have leapt feet first.
hetanshah.bsky.social Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 8d
I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight
www.cityam.com/the-british-...
The British library is in crisis: why does nobody care?
The widespread indifference to the British Library's crippling cyberattack demonstrates a perilous failure to value the knowledge infrastructure vital for national prosperity
www.cityam.com
November 18, 2025 at 2:26 PM
guysechrist.bsky.social
Spot the gaugers at work here in Philadelphia!
November 17, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by Guy Sechrist, PhD
dgb-mem.bsky.social
We are delighted to organise a book launch together with the editors of 'A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Leiden', in Leiden itself - home to Brill since 1683!
The event will be in Dutch.
brill.com/display/titl...

@judithpollmann.bsky.social @peterheijkoop.bsky.social #Leiden #medievalsky
November 17, 2025 at 3:42 PM
guysechrist.bsky.social
Go Birds!
November 17, 2025 at 4:42 AM
Reposted by Guy Sechrist, PhD
bhgross144.bsky.social
Lang has also created a YouTube class for curators, instructors & collectors who are interested in digitizing the materiality of pre-modern books.

You can watch the full playlist here: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

#HSS2025 #RareBooks #SpecColls
Digitizing the Materiality of the Premodern Book - YouTube
This playlist is part of the project "Digitizing the Materiality of the Premodern Book" ( https://dha.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/de/digitizing-materiality-premodern-boo...
www.youtube.com
November 16, 2025 at 4:12 PM
Reposted by Guy Sechrist, PhD
farsouthhistory.bsky.social
Are you looking to read some new scholarship over the winter? Check out this amazing list of books that I have available to review for H-Environment! Spread the word! #envhist #envhum #ecocrit #aghist #landscape #conservation #sustainability #anthropocene #waterhist
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Books Available to review for H-Environment
Books Available for Review for H-Environment Below are the books currently available for review for H-Environment. Interested in reviewing one? Please email me at [email protected]. If we haven’t met,...
docs.google.com
October 30, 2025 at 2:01 AM
guysechrist.bsky.social
Very excited to see the proofs of my newest (newest) article for this December’s issue of the Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society.
November 8, 2025 at 2:25 PM
guysechrist.bsky.social
I am seeing a lot of new scholars on BlueSky! Welcome!
November 7, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by Guy Sechrist, PhD
melkatrey.bsky.social
The Autumn 2025 issue of The Recipes Project is live! This issue, GLOBALIZING EARLY MODERN RECIPES, was co-edited by Lavinia Gambini, Lucy Havard, & Amanda Herbert.

recipes.hypotheses.org
Autumn 2025
GLOBALIZING EARLY MODERN RECIPES INTRODUCTION By Lavinia Gambini, Lucy Havard, and Amanda E. Herbert, Editors The early modern globalization of food and medicine was also a globalization of recipes. A...
recipes.hypotheses.org
October 30, 2025 at 11:19 AM
Reposted by Guy Sechrist, PhD
hillgower.bsky.social
Popologist here.

I'm putting together a multi-volume global history of popular music c1605-2022 and would love to hear from historians of all things – empire(s), languages, architecture, media, instruments, ye gods, etc. – with ideas for angles, intersections, inclusions. Nothing is too niche!
November 11, 2024 at 1:40 PM
guysechrist.bsky.social
I am currently applying to fellowships and feel horrible for how many letters I am asking of everyone.
November 5, 2025 at 9:08 PM
guysechrist.bsky.social
Glad to see this back in my feed - I use it often for my students when they ask me, "how do I know what's the most important part of a [book,chapter, article, etc] are?" This is a super great read and very useful! Thanks @tedmccormick.bsky.social
tedmccormick.bsky.social Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 27d
An old post from late in my Twitter days. I'm going to have to update this in some fashion for the post-generative AI context, but in that context I think something like it remains important -- perhaps is even more so. I do not think these are skills that should be outsourced, even if they could be
Reading advice for young historians
This is a sheet of reading tips I’ve developed over the past few years for my first-year students in history. I posted it on Twitter yesterday, as a png image and a tweet thread, and it got q…
memoriousblog.com
October 30, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Reposted by Guy Sechrist, PhD
julialaite.bsky.social
Here is my first publication from my new project on the history of colonial Newfoundland and the Beothuk people, and I'm rather nervous to put it out in the world. Genuinely, all thoughts on this work are welcome as I head into writing a book about it...
royalhistsoc.org Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · Oct 23
New in 'Transactions': 'Possible Maps: Newfoundland, 1763–1829' bit.ly/4oygf5V

@julialaite.bsky.social shows how overlapping maps highlight complexity of encounter with place over a coherence of colonial ideologies. What were peripheries of some people’s empires were centres of others' worlds 1/2
Opening page for the new Transactions article: 'Ppssible Maps: Newfoundland, 1763-1829'. Full abstract: "Islands have a disproportionate role – as strategic locations, as imaginative or symbolic locales, as extractive zones and as ecological bellwethers – in oceanic imperial histories. They were and are places of ‘great practical use and metaphorical power’. And yet Newfoundland was seen (and continues to be seen) as marginal and peripheral, even if the biomass that was pulled out of its ocean fed – quite literally – a global network of exploitation. This article uses four overlapping maps to tell four overlapping stories: James Cook’s circumnavigation of the island in 1763–8; Lt David Buchan’s trek into the interior to contact the Beothuk in 1811 and 1820; William Eppes Cormack and Joseph Sylvester’s trek across the island in 1822; and finally, a series of story-maps created by Shanawdithit, who is apocryphally known as ‘the last of the Beothuk’. In doing so, it draws in Indigenous ‘storywork’ and cartographic histories and makes a case for storytelling as powerful methodology for examining overlooked colonial histories. These maps and stories highlight the complexity of encounter with a place rather than a coherence of colonial ideologies. Through the stories these maps help me tell, I hope to show how the peripheries of some people’s empires were the centres of other people’s worlds." Extract from Julia Laite's new TRHS article with image of Clarence Brown's 'The Newfoundland Centred World' (1977), reproduced with permission from the Department of Geography, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador.
October 23, 2025 at 11:10 AM
guysechrist.bsky.social
I feel very seen right now.

brill.com/view/journal...
October 26, 2025 at 11:50 PM
Reposted by Guy Sechrist, PhD
artherstory.bsky.social
There are also many Rachel Ruysch paintings on view in a solo exhibition at the @mfaboston.bsky.social -
www.mfa.org/exhibition/r...

Read about these and other Dutch/Flemish women artist shows in this Art Herstory post:

A Year for Dutch and Flemish Women Artists
artherstory.net/a-year-for-d...
A photo of the title wall of the Rachel Ruysch art exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The title is in yellow text with the subtitle in white text, both presented against a dark floral still life painting in an arch set back slightly in a dark (black or very dark green) wall.
October 26, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Reposted by Guy Sechrist, PhD
dbellingradt.bsky.social
There are three types of library users: the absent-minded dreamer (1), the busy and silent reader (2), and the one looking at the other two types (3). Which one are you? #bookhistory #skystorians
Detail of a copperplate print featured in volume 1 of "Neuer Bücher-Saal der gelehrten Welt oder Ausführliche Nachrichten von allerhand neuen Büchern und andern Sachen" (1710, Leipzig) featuring three men sitting in a library.
July 9, 2025 at 6:20 AM
Reposted by Guy Sechrist, PhD
yvonneseale.bsky.social
A neat tool I just came across: Viabundus, a digital road map of northern Europe 1350-1650, that lets you calculate contemporary travel routes/times. In 1500, going Amiens → Köln by horse took almost 7 days and 13 toll payments.

#medievalsky

www.landesgeschichte.uni-goettingen.de/handelsstras...
Screenshot of the Viabundus website.
October 24, 2025 at 10:58 PM
Reposted by Guy Sechrist, PhD
pwnallthethings.bsky.social
In important math news: new shape just dropped (the noperthedron) www.quantamagazine.org/first-shape-...
First Shape Found That Can’t Pass Through Itself | Quanta Magazine
After more than three centuries, a geometry problem that originated with a royal bet has been solved.
www.quantamagazine.org
October 24, 2025 at 6:08 PM
guysechrist.bsky.social
I am very excited to share my recent contribution to Nuncius: Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science. It was such a wonderful experience working with them to get this across the finish line. Very pleased with all of the coloured figures, too!
brill.com/view/journal...
October 24, 2025 at 3:06 PM