Event Series

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

2026 marks 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.

These events are co-sponsored with our campus partners

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 year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776). In anticipation of this milestone, the Adam Smith Reading Group began a slow and careful reading of Smith’s foundational works during the 2025–26 academic year, starting with The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In Fall 2026, we will finish reading The Wealth of Nations. As the reading group’s new name indicates, we will then broaden our focus to include the works of other Enlightenment thinkers, including David Hume and Immanuel Kant.

Eurasian Empires explores the connected and comparative history of empires from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Our intellectual remit encompasses the global and regional histories of imperial formations, including the Russian, Ottoman, Safavid, Qajar, Uzbek, Mughal, Qing, Dutch, Portuguese, British, and French empires, as well as the regions and dynasties within these imperial geographies.

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.

As part of the Stanford Humanities Center Global Humanities Workshops, the History of Capitalism, provides an interdisciplinary forum for faculty and graduate students from both the humanities and social sciences. By examining capitalist development through a historical lens, the workshop bridges diverse research agendas across methods, geographic regions, time periods, and disciplines.

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.

The Medieval History Workshop is a forum for faculty and graduate students to present and discuss current research on the medieval world, ca. 500-1500.

2026-2027 Faculty Organizers:
Gili Kliger | gkliger [at] stanford.edu (gkliger[at]stanford[dot]edu)
Jana Hunter | jkhunter [at] stanford.edu (jkhunter[at]stanford[dot]edu) 

2026-2027 Graduate Student Organizer:
Eva Baudler | ebaudler [at] stanford.edu (ebaudler[at]stanford[dot]edu) 

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*Formerly know as the the European History Workshop

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 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.

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.