This conference invites participants to consider how the theme of Nature has been explored, represented, and debated across different contexts and periods. This topic allows for a wide range of approaches, from textual and visual analysis to conceptual and methodological reflections. The aim of this conference is to create an academic setting in which early career researchers can come together, share their work, and open new conversations about the place of the natural world in the history of alchemy and chemistry.
9:30 Entrance: Coffee
10:00 Opening
10:30 Keynote Speaker 1: Prof. Timothy Grieve-Carlson
The Visible Upon the Invisible: The Alchemical Sources of Modern Environmental Thought
11:15 Session 1: Alchemy, Matter, and Ecological Understanding
Domas Junelis, Vilnius University
Labour as Metabolism: Alchemical Practice and the Material Transformation of Nature
Tjalling Janssen, University of Amsterdam
The Wor(l)d Unfolds: Anthropocentrism and Environmental Knowledge in Oswald Croll’s Cosmology
12:00 Coffee Break
12:15 Session 2: Stories of Transformation in Early Modern Alchemy
Amber Rozenrichter, University of Amsterdam
Where Rivers Flow Like Serpents: Alchemy, Mythology and Nature in the Works of Michael Maier
Natalia Quiros Edmunds, Oxford University
Aurum nostrum non est aurum vulgi: Distilling alchemical knowledge in Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611)
13:00 Lunch Break
14:00 Keynote Speaker 2: Prof. Frank James The Phoenix: Davy, Coleridge and Alchemy
14:45 Session 3: Language, Matter, and Alchemical Knowledge
Taylor Ivan, Yale University
The Transmutation of "Elements" in Chemical Language
Victoria Chung, University of Exeter
Glass and the Secrets of Nature: Visibility, Transformation, and Epistemic Mediation in Early Modern Alchemy (1500–1700)
15:35 Coffee Break
15:50 Session 4: Dreams, Symbols, and Transformation in Late Antiquity
Trevor Vreeburg, University of Amsterdam
The Dreaming Zosimos: Contextualizing Zosimos’ Visions within the Egyptian Practices of Oneiromancy and Dream Incubation
Johan Brun Mendes Cederfeldt, Aarhus University
The Language of Transformation in Late Antique Alchemy and Theurgy
16:40 Session 5: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Making of Modern Concepts of Nature
Dr. Josephine Musil-Gutsch, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg
The Historiography of Alchemy and the Knowledge of Nature between Chemistry and Philology (1900–1940)
Christian Schnurr, University of Augsburg
The Concept of ‘Nature’ in Chemistry in a Digital and Ecological Age
17:30 Closing words
Do you have questions? Please send an e-mail to organizer Amber Rozenrichter