Student Groups

The Berkeley-Stanford British Studies Reading Group (B.S.R.G.) brings together a community of faculty and graduate students from both universities to discuss recent books and student works in progress on British history and British studies generally. The group discusses work on modern and early modern periods, and from national, imperial and global perspectives. Group Details

When it was formed in 2011, the Berkeley Digital Humanities Working Group provided a key institutional space for Digital Humanities on campus.  Since then, the Social Sciences D-Lab and the DH at Berkeley Program have emerged as institutional centers of Digital Humanities training and project development, and members of the DH Working Group have been involved in the development of both. Today, the Working Group exists as an important link among those and other units and departments on campus, with the goal of supporting Digital Humanities research, at all levels and broadly defined.  Membership tends to consist of junior faculty, graduate students, librarians, and staff from a number of disciplinary backgrounds, and meetings focus on sharing research (at all stages), discussing new technologies, and planning DH-related events. Please sign up for the mailing list, digital-humanities@lists.berkeley.edu, to be informed of upcoming events and meetings. Group Details

The Townsend Center's Early Modern working group, also known as the Berkeley Early Modern Organization, aims to bring together students and faculty with an interest in the "long seventeenth century" (approximately 1550-1689) in Britain, Europe, and the Americas. Its long-term goal is to create an interdepartmental scholarly community for a field in which the interdisciplinary connections between history, literature, art, and music are varied and fruitful. Group Details

The Environmental Science and History Working Group brings together scholars broadly interested in environmental history, and the development of environmental science and policy. Our research interests span a broad range of disciplines, methodologies, and historical periods. The working group meets several times per month to share and discuss writing in progress, review new published works in environmental history and related disciplines, and discuss classic texts. Members are encouraged to workshop their projects and propose readings, as the goal of the working group is to create a community of scholars. Group Details

This interdisciplinary working group brings together faculty, graduate student, and visiting scholars interested in cultural studies of science and technology. Our intellectual mission is to provide a unique contact zone between the humanities and social studies of science. Group Details

The Histories of South Asia working group is an interdepartmental group of graduate students who are interested in South Asian History. We hope to read key foundational texts by prominent historians in the fields of early modern and modern South Asia and create a space for engaging discussions through comparative historical and multidisciplinary frameworks. Group Details

The Intellectual History and Theory Working Group is a platform for scholarly exchange in the subjects and methods of intellectual history. It brings together a community of students and faculty interested generally in the study of ideas, intellectuals, and intellectual patterns over time. Our group engages current scholarship by hosting lectures that feature the latest research of local and visiting faculty members; workshopping dissertation chapters, book chapters, and articles in progress; and discussing recently published books and articles by leading scholars of intellectual history. It is our aim to further discussions on contemporary historiographical trends and the philosophy of history. Group Details

The Interdisciplinary Working Group on the Early U.S. facilitates cross-disciplinary collaboration between UC Berkeley’s students and faculty regarding topics common to the history and cultural study of the formation of the United States.  The groups’ discussions aim to expand members’ methodological and conceptual understanding of the early U.S. Group Details

Sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, with additional support from the Center for Japanese Studies, offers UC Berkeley graduate students an ongoing forum for intellectual exchange and collaboration centered on the study of Japan, past and present. Through discussion, close reading of texts, student presentations, and the coordination of presentations by outside scholars, this working group explores key themes and concerns in Japan-focused scholarship. In its inaugural year, the Berkeley Japan Studies working group invites graduate students to consider any aspect of science and technology (and their concomitant epistemologies, ontologies, practices, politics, histories, and ideologies) in relationship to Japanese society. In particular, we aim to consider the emergence and application of the concept of techno-orientalism in relationship to Japan. Group Details

Der Kreis aims to bring together an interdisciplinary community of scholars interested in German history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The groups intends to provide a forum for both students and faculty to engage with trends in current historiography as well as to present their own research. Group Details

Culture and History of East-Central Europe, also known as Kroužek, creates a wide community of scholars whose work advances the understanding of the region in all of its aspects, from high politics to everyday life. Group Details

For over twenty years, the Russian History "Kruzhok" (circle) has served the Berkeley faculty and several generations of graduate students. Group Details

Since 2004, the UC Berkeley Latin American History Working Group had been a group of graduate students and faculty interested in Latin American history seeking to build an intellectual community of historians and historically-minded scholars from other disciplines.  The group hosts twice a month working group sessions with presentations of article-length papers or chapter selections from larger projects near publication. Group Details

The Modern Jewish Culture working group focuses on the study of cultures of the global Jewish diaspora in modern times, paying specific attention to the intersection between museum collections, art, material culture, and academic instruction. Group Details

The Ottoman and Turkish Studies working group is dedicated to discussing important new and classic scholarship, to hosting speakers, and to presenting and critiquing original research on topics within the realm of Ottoman and Turkish Studies. The group also collaborates with students and faculty from other local universities. Group Details

The Religion and History working group is an interdisciplinary seminar that explores theoretical questions in the study of religion and its history, through discussion of narratives of secularization and traditions of scriptural interpretation among many other topics. Group Details

Strategy imbues the relationship between ends, ways, and means with direction and purpose. The exercise of statecraft has relied upon dynamic strategies to an advanced degree more than any other collective human activity. As an intellectual enterprise, the Berkeley Working Group on Strategy and Statecraft provides an interdisciplinary forum for studying these calculated endeavors in theory and practice across space and time. We focus on grand challenges to world order, such as climate, economic, humanitarian, political, and security crises, as well as scholarship addressing strategy and statecraft more broadly, including social, class, culture, and gender analyses. Graduate students and faculty from across departments and neighboring institutions constitute the working group. We foster a dialogue on strategic thinking between those residing in the social sciences, public policy, and military affairs to generate a formal, campus-wide network. Our regular meetings feature discussions on selected readings, guest lectures, and presentations of articles or chapters from larger projects. Contact: statecraft@berkeley.edu

The Berkeley Urban History Working Group convenes scholars from History, Rhetoric, Geography, and Architecture to study the city across time and space. By gathering scholars with a common interest in the city, we hope to identify and begin to address the big questions and problems that transcend the constraints of discipline, time period, or geography. While our expertise is broad, our concerns are sharply focused. The working group will commit itself to framing and responding to a few questions common to urbanists and their sites of inquiry. Group Details