Event Series

2026 marks the 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations (1776). To celebrate the occasion, the Adam Smith Reading Group will undertake a slow and careful reading of Smith’s foundational works.

This long-standing series is the key intellectual forum for Stanford historians who study the African continent and its diaspora.

2026 makes the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Below you will find a list of events, hosted by or involving Department of History faculty, related to this historic milestone in our nation's history.

This page will be updated regularly to include more events as we are made aware of them.

This lecture series brings distinguished researchers in Modern British History together with Stanford community.

This series includes lectures and conferences that focus on diverse issues in Digital History as a field.

The Early Modern History Workshop brings together Stanford historians from across intradisciplinary specialties to share their current research on the early modern period, which we define broadly as encompassing the long fifteenth through eighteenth centuries.

The East Asian History Working Group supports the informal intellectual community of professors and graduate students interested in East Asian history.

The Gender History Workshop brings together Stanford historians from across geographic and temporal specialties to present their current research on the histories of women, gender, and sexuality.

Graduate Students Representatives organize a number of social gatherings throughout the year to build and foster a close-knit graduate community among Stanford History graduate students. Activities include pomodoro working sessions, local excursions, game nights, attending athletic events, and community dinners. Meetings are announced via the graduate student mailing list. For more information, please contact the current representatives. 

Historical Conversations is a quarterly event series where Stanford History Faculty workshop their work-in-progress or recently published books.

The History and Philosophy of Science Reading Group aims to form an intellectual community of graduate students interested in closely analyzing foundational scholarship in the field.

The Latin American and Caribbean History Workshop (LACH) represents an unique series of gatherings of Latin Americanist faculty and graduate students to share, discuss and develop ongoing research into Latin American and Caribbean History in a friendly and relaxed environment, fostering interdisciplinarity and collaboration in the pursuit of excellence on the field.

This reading group aims to bridge the studies of Mexico and Mexican communities in the United States. We draw from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives and works to promote the shared study of binational Mexican communities, their histories, and their experiences. Our reading group is thus also a forum for the increasing intellectual and professional merging of the fields of Latin American and Latinx studies (of which Mexican and Mexican American history are part). As such, we seek to fill the gap for a shared intellectual space at Stanford for budding scholars of both Mexico and Mexicans in the United States.

Covid-19 has prompted many within the History Department to reflect on what our own areas of research can tell us about our current predicament.

The Slavery and Freedom research workshop offers a vital, interdisciplinary space for Stanford scholars to discuss the leading methodologies, approaches, debates, and innovations for the academic study of slavery and freedom in and beyond the Atlantic world in various modes, including archival research, public history, theory, and digital scholarship.

The Social Theory Reading Group aims to explore foundational texts in historical and sociological theory, beginning this year with Max Weber’s "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism". Open to early modernists and historians of related periods, the group provides a collaborative space for historiographical analysis and methodological reflection.

The Stanford Environmental and Climate History Workshop (SECH) connects scholars on campus who are researching, writing, or teaching about histories of environmental and climate change as well as questions of environmental and climate justice across periods and geographies. We host social events, guest speakers, book talks, skill-building workshops, discussions of practice, and more.

Our readings of Stuart Hall (1932-2014) situate this thinker as one of the twentieth century’s foremost public theorists of culture, identity, history, and capitalism. This group convenes interdisciplinary perspectives to examine how Hall brought historiography to bear upon broader debates in Marxism, postcolonial studies, critical theory, and media studies.

The U.S. History Workshop gathers faculty and graduate students to discuss works in progress and to foster intellectual community among scholars of U.S. history, as well as related fields and disciplines at Stanford.