2022
“The Cuban Missile Crisis at 60 and Risk Reduction Today,” invited lecturer to a private dinner of twelve United Nations ambassadors on disarmament, hosted by the Swiss delegation to the United Nations and the Institute for Security and Technology, New York City, August 5, 2022.
“The Challenges and Opportunities of Civil Defense Messaging Today,” Homeland Defense Symposium, Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, July 13, 2022.
“The Possibility of Much Bigger Bangs: The Role of Very-Large Nuclear Weapons in the High Cold War.” Colloquium, Carleton College, May 11, 2022.
Featured author, Hoboken Literary Weekend, Little City Books, April 2, 2022.
“The Secret Histories of Laser Fusion.” Colloquium, Deutsches Museum (Munich), January 17, 2022.
2021
“How to Lose a Lot of Weapons-Grade Uranium and Get Away With it.” STS Circle, Harvard Kennedy School, November 29, 2021.
“The Atomic Bombings as Past and Present: The Difficult History of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at 75.” History of Science Society/Society for the History of Technology Joint Annual Meeting, November 19, 2021. (Postponed from 2020 due to COVID-19.)
“The Tuballoy Project: Bloomfield’s Westinghouse Plant and Uranium Production for the Manhattan Project.” Montclair State University, October 21, 2021.
“What is a nuclear secret and who can make one?” Colloquium, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, September 16, 2021.
Book talks about Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States virtually at Stevens Institute of Technology (March 2021), Science and Global Security Program, Princeton University (April 2021), SciencesPo, Paris (April 2021), National History Center, Washington, DC (May 2021), Lyceum Society, NYC (June 2021), Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (June 2021), Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (July 2021).
“Physicists and Nuclear Secrecy.” Webinar, Physics Today, May 5, 2021.
“Rethinking U.S.-Russian Nuclear Arms Control,” Victor Rabinowitch Memorial Symposium, January 13, 2021. Invited panelist/commentator.
2020
“Seeing the Unthinkable: Historical and Contemporary Approaches to the Visualization of Nuclear War.” Colloquium, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark, December 4, 2020.
“The ‘Best-Kept Secret of the War’? The Successes and Failures of Manhattan Project Secrecy.” Los Alamos Historical Society, November 17, 2020.
“The Atomic Bomb and Visions of the New Post War Order.” Keynote speech, Inaugural Reddit AskHistorians Digital Conference, September 15, 2020.
“The Age of Hiroshima: The Nuclear Revolution on the 75th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings.” Wilson Center, Washington, DC, February 13, 2020. Invited Panelist.
2019
“Dr. Strangelove in Retrospective.” Invited commentary, Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard Kennedy School, November 21, 2019.
“The ‘Best-Kept Secret of the War’? The Successes and Failures of the Manhattan Project’s Secrecy Regime.” Colloquium, Gallatin School, New York University, November 20, 2019.
“Revising the Cold War.” Panel participant, Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest at Villanova University, November 6, 2019.
“Drawing the bomb: Secrecy, style, and diagrammatic representations of nuclear weapons, diagrams.” Colloquium, Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, October 21, 2019.
“Lessons on Scientific and Technological Governance from Nuclear History.” Talk before a panel workshop of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering, Stanford University, September 2019.
“The ‘New’ Nuclear Arms Race,” Ploughshares Fund Chain Reaction 2019, San Francisco, CA, May 2019. Invited keynote speaker.
“The Challenge of the Atomic Bomb.” Annual AP Conference, Smithtown School District, Smithtown West and Smithtown East High Schools, Smithtown, NY, May 2019.
“The Legacy of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States,” Annual Meeting, American Physical Society, Denver, CO, April 2019.
“Reinventing Civil Defense,” Radiation Advisory Committee, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Queens, NY, April 8, 2019.
“Cyberwar in a Nuclear Age & Nuclear War in a Cyber Age,” Farber Faculty Fellowship Talk, College of Arts and Letters, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, April 2019.
“NC3 Decision Making: Individual Versus Group Process,” Conference on NC3 Systems and Strategic Stability, sponsored by the Nautilus Institute, Stanford University, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, January 2019.
“Crisis Response and the New Nuclear Threat Landscape,” workshop on the anniversary of the Hawaii false alarm, sponsored by the Stanley Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York, Honolulu, HI, January 2019.
2018
“Nuclear secrecy in the American context,” Nuclear Knowledges Workshop, SciencesPo, Paris, France, November 2018.
“Reinventing Civil Defense: Duck and Cover for the New Nuclear Age,” TEDxStevens, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, September 2018.
“Patents, Priority, and Problems: Nuclear Weapons and Intellectual Property in the Cold War.” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 2018.
“Photographic Experiments with The Bomb.” Magnum Foundation, New York City, May 2018.
“Truman’s Bomb and the Making of the Atomic Presidency.” Lawrence Badash Memorial Lecture, University of California, Santa Barbara, May 2018.
“Nuclear Command and Control: A Brief Primer.” Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, March 2018.
2017
“Duck and Cover All Over Again.” Singularity University, California, July 2017; SIREN Seminar, Virginia Tech, November 2017.
“Remembering the Saved City: Kyoto, the Atomic Bomb, and the Nuclear Taboo.” Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Kyoto, Japan, August 2017.
“What Truman Knew (And Didn’t Know) About Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Global Hiroshima Conference (sponsored by Princeton University and the Prefecture of Hiroshima), Hiroshima, Japan, August 2017.
“Civil Defense, Nuclear Fear, and Nuclear Salience: What We Lost When We Lost Bert the Turtle.” New Nuclear Imaginaries Workshop, Harvard Kennedy School, April 2017.
“Presidential Control of Nuclear Weapons: Then and Now.” Project on Managing the Atom Seminar Series, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, April 2017.
“Secrecy and the Control of Science and Technology: Lessons from History and Sociology.” Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford, February 2017.
2016
“Nuclear Ships of States: Strategic Weapons and Redefinitions of Authority.” History of Science Society (HSS) Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, November 2016.
“Secrecy and the Bomb: From the Postwar to the Cold War,” Brown University, October 2016.
“The Nuclear Triad: A Very Brief History.” Invited talk, Timbie Forum 2016, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, July 2016.
“Maintaining the Bomb.” The Maintainers Conference, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, April 2016.
2015
“Clean, Limitless, Classified: The Secret Histories of Laser Fusion.” Global Technology, Global Impacts Conference, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD, March 2014. Invited talk, New York City History of Science Consortium, Columbia University, New York, NY, October 2014. l’Institut des Sciences de la Communication du CNRS (ISCC), Université Sorbonne, Paris, France, December 2015.
“Digital Exposure and Academic Expertise.” History of Science Society (HSS) Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, November 2015.
Panel participant, “Roundtable: H.O.T. Goes Pop! Histories of Technology in the Public Eye.” Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM, October 2015.
Invited commentator on a performance of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, Central Square Theatre, Somerville, MA, October 2015.
“Kyoto and Kokura: What the Spared Targets of 1945 Tell Us About Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Invited talk, “Nuclear Legacies: A Global Look at the 70th Anniversary of the Hiroshima Bombing,” Princeton University, September 2015.
“The Possibility of Much Bigger Bangs: U.S. Official Interest in ‘Very High Yield’ Nuclear Weapons, 1942-1963.” Reppy Institute Seminar, Cornell University, September 2015. Colloquilum, Department for the History of Science and Technology, Johns Hopkins University, September 2015. STS Fellows talk, Harvard Kennedy School, October 2015.
“Nuclear History 101: The Past, Present, and Future of the Bomb,” at the 6th Annual Generation Prague Conference, hosted by the US Department of State and George Washington University, at the State Department, Washington, DC, July 2015.
“The Manhattan Project: A Crucible for Innovation,” at Manhattan Project 70th Anniversary Symposium, hosted by the Atomic Heritage Foundation, at Carnegie Institute for Science, Washington, DC, June 2015.
“Addressing the data gap: What digital tools do archival historians need, and how can we get them?,” History of Data/Data in History invited conference, Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University, April 2015.
“What would Happen if a Nuclear Weapon went off in New York?,” Department of History, Upper School, Horace Mann School, Bronx, NY, April 2015.
Colloquium, Pre-circulated paper: “Gagging the H-bomb,” Department of History, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, March 2015.
“Atomic Misconception: How the Debate over Kyoto Affected Truman’s Understanding of Hiroshima,” CAL Humanities Forum, Stevens Institute of Technology, March 2015.
“The Practices of Secrecy: A Phenomenological Approach to Information Control Regimes,” East Coast Sociological Society Annual Meeting, New York, NY, March 2015.
“Personalizing the Bomb,” at The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction, at The New York Academy of Medicine (included panel discussion with Noam Chomsky and Hugh Gusterson), March 2015.
2014
Colloquium, “Digitizing the Bomb: Experiments with Nuclear History, Science, and Pedagogy,” School of History, Technology, and Society, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, November 2014.
Chair, “Workshop: Digital and Computational History of Science: Tools, Platforms, Networks, and Corpora,” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, November 2014.
“Martian Dialogues: Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and the Question of Nuclear Weapons.” Invited talk, Montclair State University, October 2014.
“John Wheeler’s H-bomb Blues: Secrecy, History, and a Missing Document in the High Cold War.” Colloquium, Gallatin School, NYU, November 2012; Colloquium, Physics Department, Catholic University of America, January 2013. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, April 2014.
2013
“The Role of Europe in American Nuclear Secrecy.” Cold War Science Workshop, Lorentz Center, Leiden, the Netherlands, December 2013.
“‘There is No Mystery about Producing a 50 Megaton Bomb’: Very High-Yield Nuclear Weapons and the Limited Test Ban Treaty.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, November 2013.
“Personalizing the Nuclear World,” Invited Panelist, Workshop on Nuclear Issues Education, Stevens Institute of Technology, November 2013.
“Getting to Know the Bomb: Experiments the Public Understanding of Nuclear Weapons.” Invited talk, Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, CA, March 2013; Colloquium, Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University, November 2013.
Panelist, “Power and Promise: What’s Become of Our Nuclear Golden Age?” Chemical Heritage Foundation, September 2013.
Invited panelist, “Transforming the Relationship Between Science and Society: The Manhattan Project and Its Legacy.” Atomic Heritage Foundation NSF Workshop, February 2013.
“The Hydrogen Bomb and the Shifting Focus of Cold War Scientific Secrecy.” Colloquium, National Museum of American History, January 2013.
2012
“The History of Nuclear Weapons and the Future of Proliferation.” Nuclear Policy Talk, Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University, December 2012.
“Networked history: Thinking through the Web.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, November 2012.
“Caught in the Circle of Secrecy: Failed Attempts at Classification Reform in the Early Atomic Energy Commission, 1947-1950.” Policy History Conference, Richmond, VA, June 2012, and Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Meeting, Hartford, CT, June 2012.
“Scientific Secrecy and WMD Nonproliferation: An Analytical Framework.” Invited talk, Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, April 2012.
Invited panelist, “Ethically Impossible: A Panel Discussion on Non-Consensual Medical Research in Guatemala, Africa, and the United States.” Georgetown Law School, February 2012.
2011
“Nuclear Secrets in the Twilight Zone: The H-bomb ‘Gag Order’ of 1950.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Cleveland, OH, November 2011.
“Classifying Dual-use Science: Lessons from the Early History of Laser Fusion.” Colloquium, Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University, October 2011.
“Gambling for H-bombs: Publicizing and Privatizing Laser Fusion, 1969-1975.” Maryland Colloquium in the History of Technology, Science, and Environment (University of Maryland, College Park), October 2011.
“Secrecy in the Age of WikiLeaks.” Invited lecture, Harvard Club of Long Island, March 2011.
“Legalizing American Nuclear Secrecy.” Invited lecture and panel discussion, part of “Nuclear Secrets: Democracy and the National Security State,” EPIIC International Symposium for Global Leadership, Tufts University, February 2011.
2002-2010
“‘Restricted Data’: The Regulation of Nuclear Knowledge in the United States.” Seminar, Managing the Atom Project, Harvard Kennedy School, October 2010.
“Atoms for Peace, Atoms for Terror: Debating Secrecy versus Safeguards in the 1970s.” Colloquium, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University, September 2010.
“Why You Can’t Patent an Atomic Bomb: Nuclear Weapons as Intellectual Property.” Invited public lecture, “Science, Technology, and Legal Regulation” lecture series, Münchner Zentrum für Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte, Munich, Germany, June 2010.
“Secrecy and the Bomb: From the Postwar to the Cold War.” States of Secrecy Conference, Harvard University, April 2009. History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Phoenix, AZ, November 2009.
“Selling Secrecy: Laser Fusion, Classification, and the Turbulent 1970s.” STS Circle, Harvard Kennedy School, October 2008.
“The Committee on Declassification and the Question of Postwar Secrecy.” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Meeting, Columbus, OH, June 2008.
“‘Old H-bomb Arguments Never Die!’: History, Secrecy, and the Teller-Ulam Priority Dispute.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Crystal City, VA, November 2007.
“Drawing the Bomb: Secrecy and the Visual Depiction of Nuclear Weapons.” 16th Annual Berkeley Symposium, Interdisciplinary Approaches to Visual Representation, University of California, Berkeley, March 2005; Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Pasadena, CA, November 2005.
“The Organization of Compulsory Sterilization and Eugenics in California, 1909-1951.” West Coast History of Science Society Annual Meeting, University of California, San Francisco, 2002.