Thomás Haddad is an Associate Professor of History of Science at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil and a 2021-22 Linda Hall Library Fellow. His research examines the cultural and political history of stargazing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries across the Atlantic and Portuguese colonial worlds. He is also interested in Moon maps and mapmakers, and his monograph Maps of the Moon: Lunar Cartography from the Seventeenth Century to the Space Age was published by Brill in 2019.

Nydia Pineda de Avila is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of California San Diego and a 2023-24 Linda Hall Library Fellow. She works at the intersection of history of science, art history, and history of the book, focusing on the technical, political, and rhetorical function of astronomical images and instruments in a global history of science, art, and technology.  Her forthcoming monograph, Paper Moons: The Poetics of Selenographies in the Seventeenth Century, will offer the first cultural history of lunar maps in the aftermath of the dissemination of the telescope and the Galilean controversies over the appearance and nature of the Moon. 

Sophie Emma Battell is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Zurich and a 2023-24 Linda Hall Library Fellow. Her first book, On the Threshold: Hospitality in Shakespeare's Drama, was published last year with Edinburgh University Press. She is currently working on a new project, Sun Cultures in Early Modern England.

Alessia Tami is an English and Publishing graduate student from Bath Spa University, UK, currently in the final year of a literary studies MA at Zürich University. She is passionate about the blue humanities, ecocriticism, and animal studies. As an undergraduate, she greatly enjoyed researching for Cheltenham Literature Festival and writing for the University’s student magazine.  At present, her research focus is on the role of water and water rights in Australian indigenous storytelling. Focusing on the sun in early modernity struck her as an opportunity to take a closer look at another source of life and energy.

Olivia Lanni is pursuing a Master’s degree in English and German Literature and Linguistics at the University of Zurich. Her main field of interest is early modern theatre, especially in connection to psychoanalysis and the Medical Humanities. She also teaches German at a Swiss private school and works at university as a tutor for Textual Analysis. She loves working with literature in various ways as it forms its own kind of unique looking-glass for our history, and it’s truly a gift that keeps on giving!

Wilmari Claasen holds a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Linguistics and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Literary Studies at the University of Zürich. Her field of interest is mostly focused on early modern drama, though she also enjoys other literary genres of the period, as well as Gothic and Romantic literature. She has been working at the Self-Access Center of the University of Zürich and ETH since 2021, a library that provides resources to assist with autonomous language learning.