CFP: "Experts” in the 20th Century: Between Academia, Public Discourse, and Politics

 CFP: "Experts” in the 20th Century: Between Academia, Public Discourse, and Politics - Hamburg 19.09.2024 - 20.09.2024, deadline 31.03.2024

Recent years have seen a surge in discussions regarding the role of experts in politics and the public sphere, along with their corresponding influence. A notable example is the COVID-19 pandemic; since 2020, virologists, epidemiologists, and various other experts have gained considerable prominence in public discourse. Similar observations can be made in international politics. Especially since 2022, in the context of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and the geopolitical confrontation between the USA and China, “Russia experts”, “China experts”, or “military experts” have been appearing almost daily in the media to present their interpretations of events and developments.

This shows that, on one hand, experts are now an indispensable part of the public sphere; on the other hand, the terms “expert” and “expertise” are often used without much reflection. Against this backdrop, humanities and social science scholars have endeavored over the past decades to make experts and their expertise a subject of research.

Our workshop in Hamburg in September 2024 aims to build upon these discussions: Using selected case studies from the beginning of the 20th century to the present, we aim to collaboratively explore the phenomenon of expertise in the tension field between academia, public discourse, and politics. We perceive experts not in an essentializing way, but rather seek a reflexive understanding of key categories and concepts. With this approach, we want to explore the construct of expertise as a multifaceted and dynamic phenomenon, focusing not only on the practice and interactions of experts but also on the negotiations and attributions of expertise, as well as the profiling and networking strategies of experts. How and between whom is it negotiated who is an “expert”? How can “expertise” be defined in contrast to knowledge or competence? Is expertise synonymous with “expert knowledge”? What is the relationship between knowledge, academia, and expertise in selected time periods and in different cultural contexts? In which areas does an advisory function and practical mediation of experts become apparent (politics, economy)? How is expertise in a specific field subject to attributions and negotiation processes? What significance do institutional structures play as conditioning factors of expertise, and how can the agency of experts be understood?

The workshop contributions may address the following guiding perspectives but are not limited to them:

- Categorical Considerations: Historicity of the understanding of experts, expertise as a subject of discursive negotiations and attributions in public discourse and politics (self- and external attribution)

- Academia and Expertise: Relationship between knowledge, academia, and expertise, academicization of expertise

- Self-Reflections: Role understanding and self-fashioning of experts (advisors, mediators, intellectuals), gain and loss of status, inscribing in (intellectual) traditions

- Networking: Practice of networking, network formation as a resource, strategy, and product of interactions, approaches to historical network analysis

- Practice I: Public Discourse: Self- and external presentations, public communication and media resonance spaces, attributions of expertise, credibility and authenticity strategies, claims of interpretation by experts

- Practice II: Politics and Economy: Claims to shape, practice of advising and mediating, methodological reflections on the effectiveness of experts

- Agency and Structures: Integration of experts, dependency and interconnection structures, emergence and change of action spaces

- Expert Cultures: Language, habitus, trends, ruptures, competitions, expert cartels, criticism, and crises

We invite all those who wish to critically engage with experts, their actions, and their self-reflection to participate in our workshop. The empirical subjects with which we want to approach the guiding perspectives should preferably be from the 20th century, but we also welcome contributions from other time periods. Alongside case studies and categorical reflections from the Western-European context, we are particularly interested in in-depth examinations from Eastern European or Asian contexts. The workshop is interdisciplinary in nature; we welcome contributions not only from history but also from disciplines such as law, philosophy, political science, sociology, ethnology, or regional studies. Priority will be given to ongoing research projects from doctoral and postdoctoral work, but the workshop is open to all interested parties. Contributions can be presented in German or English, with German being the workshop language.

We are pleased to announce that Professor Caspar Hirschi (University of St. Gallen) will deliver a keynote speech.

Please submit project outlines (max. 2 pages) and a brief academic CV by March 31st, 2024, to the organizers messingschlager@hsu-hh.de and paul.schroeck@geschichte.uni-freiburg.de