In 2009, the World History Center partnered with with the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the University of Pittsburgh Press in a publishing initiative funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The initiative looked to articulate the study of science (and technology) within world history and to identify global perspectives in the history of science. The project's first conference took place at Pitt in 2012 under the title "Linnaean Worlds: Global Scientific Practice during the Great Divergence." A second Pittsburgh conference took place in 2014 under the title "The Life Sciences after World War II." A third conference, "Found in Translation: World History of Science, 1200-1600," took place in 2015.
Global Scientific Practice in an Age of Revolutions, 1750-1850 was the first published work to come from this initiative. Published in 2016 and edited by Patrick Manning and Daniel Rood, the volume is meant to initiate a set of studies on the world history of science. The scholars included in this work address global parallels and interconnections in the history of science, centering on a period of dramatic worldwide transformations in economy, politics, society, and culture.