Global Forensic Histories Workshop

A group of historians of law, medicine, and science came together for a virtual workshop in March 2021. The Global Forensic Histories Workshop was co-organized by Binyamin Blum (UC Hastings Law) and our blogger Mitra Sharafi (University of Wisconsin Law School). It was co-sponsored by UC Hastings Law, UW Law School, and the American Society for Legal History. 

Here is the line-up of papers:

Day 1 (Chair: Binyamin Blum)

• Khaled Fahmy (University of Cambridge), “Forensic Medicine in nineteenth- century Egypt”

• Mina Khalili (New York University), “Redefining Criminal Evidence”

• Susanna Blumenthal (University of Minnesota), “Toward a Genealogy of the Pathological Liar”

• Mitra Sharafi (University of Wisconsin–Madison), “Planted Poison and Wrongful Convictions”

• Ian Burney (Manchester University), “A History of Innocence: Erle Stanley Gardner, the Court of Last Resort, and the Pursuit of Wrongful Conviction in Post-war America”

Day 2 (Chair: Mitra Sharafi)

• Projit Mukharji (University of Pennsylvania), “Psychic Detectives: Occult technologies and braided forensics in the British Raj”

• Keren Weitzberg (University College London), “White Backlash”

• Claire Cage (University of South Alabama), “Reproductive Bodies and Forensic Medicine in Modern France”

• Catherine Evans (University of Toronto), “Burning Bodies and Medico- Legal Expertise in Nineteenth-Century Britain”

• Binyamin Blum (University of California, Hastings), “Forensic Culture in the Age of Empire: How Colonialism Shaped the Forensic Sciences”

• Chris Hamlin (University of Notre Dame), “The severing of forensic medicine from public health”

The group shared meals at the end of each day using Uber Eats and SpatialChat.

--Mitra Sharafi