CFP: Museums of Science and Technology as Dynamic Sites of Knowledge Production in Historical Perspective

Museums of Science and Technology as Dynamic Sites of Knowledge Production in Historical Perspective

A conference hosted by the Ignaz Lieben Society and the Technisches Museum Wien

12–13 November 2026, Technisches Museum Wien

Introduction

Museums of science and technology are at once enduring and dynamic sites of knowledge production. They organise, preserve, store, research, and interpret knowledge and objects—both physically and digitally. They serve as cultural and social meeting points where knowledge, objects (increasingly including media and interactive exhibits), and people from diverse social and professional backgrounds converge. Today, museums of science and technology act as centres for education and research, promoting scientific and technological knowledge, encouraging critical reflection on scientific and technological change, and fostering civic engagement and social responsibility.

The tasks and missions of these museums have changed over time. The history of museums of science and technology spans more than two centuries and may be described as a succession of several generations. Institutions of the first generation, such as the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers founded in Paris in 1794 and the Imperial-Royal National-Fabriksprodukten-Kabinett at the Polytechnic Institute in Vienna, emerged from cabinets of curiosities as well as scientific and commodity collections used for teaching.

These were primarily object-centred display collections designed to disseminate knowledge, with formalised public access and a strong emphasis on observing rather than hands-on engagement.

The second generation represented museums in the modern sense, such as the Deutsches Museum (1906) and the Technisches Museum Wien (1909). These museums explicitly targeted a broad public and sought to convey technological progress and the scientific and technical achievements of industrialisation. They often incorporated collections from first-generation predecessor institutions. For instance, the National-Fabriks-Produktenkabinett and the Technische Kabinett of the Vienna Polytechnic formed the foundation of the Technisches Museum Wien.

The emergence of a third generation of museums is linked to science centres, notably the Exploratorium in San Francisco (1969), which served as an international model. Concepts developed in the United States influenced further museum foundations such as the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie in Paris (1986) and the Technoseum in Mannheim (1990). These institutions shifted their focus away from the mere presentation of historical objects toward more interactive exhibitions designed to convey abstract principles through experiential learning.

More recently, scholars have proposed the concept of a fourth generation of science and technology museums, seeking to promote civic engagement, social responsibility, and critical engagement with scientific and technological topics.

Aim of the Conference

The aim of the conference is to deepen our understanding of how the emergence and development of museums of science and technology stimulated, presented, and preserved knowledge. We seek to examine museums as dynamic sites where knowledge about science and technology was established, displayed, negotiated, communicated, and at times silenced or rejected. We welcome contributions from the history of science and technology, cultural and social history, and science and technology studies.

Analyses should consider diverse historical, social, and cultural contexts and identify museums as sites of knowledge production within broader frameworks of scientific and technological education and research.

We particularly welcome studies that highlight how these museums historically represented forms of hegemonic knowledge and deprived marginalised communities of their objects and knowledge systems. We likewise welcome studies that explore the gender-specific dimensions of knowledge production and representation, such as the invisibility of women’s contributions to science and technology or gendered portrayals of technological change.

Methodological and Thematic Approaches

In the following, we outline possible methodological and thematic approaches through which we aim to analyse in greater depth the four generations or types of museums of science and technology mentioned above. This list is not exhaustive; contributions that address the overall theme of the conference using other methods or thematic perspectives are explicitly welcome.

Institutions, Networks, Stakeholders

We welcome contributions on the history of the foundations of science and technology museums and their affiliated research institutes, their missions, organisational structures, and functional profiles. Possible sources include founding documents, legal frameworks, funding records, job descriptions, self-representations, and both institutional and private correspondence. We particularly welcome network analyses and studies of the relationships between museums and universities, research institutes, schools, ministries, industries, trade associations, funding bodies, NGOs, and other communities or stakeholder groups. In the 19th century, museums of science and technology were closely intertwined with the emergence of the technical sciences (Klein 2016). The dominant discourse of progress was not supplemented or replaced by alternative narratives until the late 20th century. We welcome contributions that examine both the longevity of this progress narrative and the ruptures within it—within the institution itself as well as in its networks and interactions with various partners from politics, commerce and industry, universities, schools, and beyond.

Architecture, Exhibitions, Spaces

Museums of science and technology contribute, through their buildings and often iconic architectures, to the spatial anchoring of science and technology within the landscapes of cities and nations. Their exhibitions—with their specific assemblages of artefacts, images, interactives, and texts—constitute material stagings of science and technology through which meaning has been and continues to be assigned to the modern world (Bigg/Bergeron 2021). We welcome contributions that engage with the material, spatial, and experiential dimensions of representing science and technology, and that analyse exhibitions as embodied forms of knowledge production by drawing on catalogues, photographs, reports, and reviews (Fleming 2019, Lehmann-Brauns et al. 2010).

Collections and Objects

We welcome contributions that analyse the ongoing processes of knowledge production, negotiation, and erasure that take place through the collecting of objects in museums of science and technology. Similar to developments in art history, scholars of the history of technology have identified the emergence of two types of technological historiography: an object-centred history practiced in museums, and a predominantly text-based history conducted at universities. We particularly encourage contributions that seek to reconnect these two modes of writing the history of technology and that systematically use museum objects as prisms for a multifaceted history of technology (Ebert 2019, Boon et al. 2024).

Utopias, Visions, and Future Perspectives of Museums

One metaphor for the dynamic museum comes from technology: that of the paternoster lift—an open, continuous conveyor in which people, objects, and knowledge circulate without interruption and where no fixed hierarchy of top and bottom exists. Utopias and visions of what museums of science and technology should be, as well as calls for and warnings against particular directions in which these museums might develop, have accompanied their history. We welcome contributions on past utopias, visions, and controversies concerning the purpose and mission of science and technology museums. Within this framework, we explicitly invite presentations on the so-called fourth generation of science and technology museums and welcome examples of museums and exhibitions that foster community‑oriented scientific literacy, civic engagement, and social responsibility.

Keynote

Helmuth Trischler (Munich)

Submission Guidelines

The publication of the conference contributions in the journal 'Blätter für Technikgeschichte' is planned.

Please submit an abstract and a short CV by 15 March 2026 to: ILG_TMW_Tagung_2026@tmw.at

Travel and accommodation reimbursement is not possible or only possible in exceptional cases.

References

Bergeron, Andrée, Bigg, Charlotte. (2021). The spatial inscription of science in the twentieth century. History of Science, 59(2), 121-132. https://doi.org/10.1177/0073275320988399

Boon, Tim, Haines, Elizabeth, Dubois, Arnaud, Staubermann, Klaus. (2024). Understanding Use: objects in museums of science and technology. (Artefacts Studies in the History of Science and Technology, Volume 11). Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press. https://doi.org/10.5479/si.25444927

Boyle, Alison, Hagmann, Johannes-Geert. (2017). Challenging Collections. Approaches to the heritage of recent science and technology. (Artefacts Studies in the History of Science and Technology, Volume 11). Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press. https://doi.org/10.5479/si.9781944466121

Canadelli, Elena, Beretta, Marco, Ronzon, Laura (2019). Behind the Exhibit: Displaying Science and Technology at World's Fairs and Museums in the Twentieth Century (Artefacts Studies in the History of Science and Technology, Volume 12). Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press. Book. https://doi.org/10.5479/si.9781944466237

Ebert, Anne-Katrin (2019). Ran an die Objekte! Ein Plädoyer für das gemeinsame Erforschen und Sammeln von Objekten in den technischen Museen. In: Heßler, Martina, Weber, Heike: Provokationen der Technikgeschichte. Zum Reflexionszwang historischer Forschung. 229-258. https://doi.org/10.30965/9783657792337_008

Fleming, Martha. (2019). Embodied ephemeralities: Methodologies and historiographies for investigating the display and spatialization of science and technology in the twentieth century. History of Science, 59(2), 197. https://doi.org/10.1177/0073275319858528

Friedman, Alan J. (2010). The evolution of the science museum. Physics Today, 63(10), 45. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3502548

Klein, Ursula (2016). Nützliches Wissen. Die Erfindung der Technikwissenschaften, Göttingen: Wallstein.

Lackner, Helmut, Jesswein, Katharina, Zuna-Kratky, Gabriele (2009), 100 Jahre Technisches Museum Wien, Wien: Verlag Carl Ueberreuter.

Mikoletzky, Juliane, Jiresch, Erich (1997). K.K. Polytechnisches Institut – Technische Hochschule – Technische Universität Wien, Wien: TU Wien.

Pedretti, Erminia, Iannini, Ana Maria Navas. (2023). Vers des musées scientifiques de quatrième génération: changer les objectifs, changer les rôles. Culture & Musées, 41, 151. https://doi.org/10.4000/culturemusees.10013

Rennie, Léonie J. (2021). Controversy and Critical Exhibitions: Envisioning a Fourth Generation of Science Museums. Canadian Journal of Science Mathematics and Technology Education, 21(1), 213. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42330-021-00142-w

Lehmann-Brauns, Susanne, Sichau, Christian and Trischler, Helmuth (Hg.), 2010, The Exhibition as Product and Generator of Scholarship (Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte)

Trischler, Helmuth (2024). The research museum – a place of integrated knowledge production. In: Science Museum Group Journal 22,3. https://dx.doi.org/10.15180/242204

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Epistemic Passages: Knowledge in Translation, 9–11 September 2026 in Prague

(Deadline extended to 28. February 2026)  The board of the Society for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology (GWMT) invites you to the 2026 annual conference in cooperation with the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University and the Prague department of the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO).

The conference will take place 9–11 September 2026 in Prague and will focus on the theme:

Epistemic Passages: Knowledge in Translation

Taking the opportunity of convening in a city that over centuries experienced has the positive as well as the negative aspects of the encounter of different cultures, confessions, ideologies, or nations, the GWMT annual conference will focus on scholarly translation practices and their consequences. While translation is usually associated with so-called natural languages, our conference will extend beyond this to include knowledge moving across time, space, ideologies, religions and confessions, technical and media environments or between scholars and laypeople.

We want to focus on the dynamics of knowledge in transit and its interrelations with the settings it traverses and/or newly creates as it travels. How does knowledge become rewritten and reconceptualized to new contexts after years of being forgotten in dusky libraries? How does it change when it is appropriated into new confessional, social or ideological contexts? How does it change while travelling from discipline to discipline (as, e.g. from medicine to the humanities or vice versa)? How do scholars rewrite the knowledge of laypeople – and how do non-academics transform academic knowledge into one that is accessible for them and their networks? How does (academic) knowledge change when it is applied into practice? How is translation of knowledge technically mediated and informed?

Not only practices, but also specific understandings of translation are consequential. Assumed universality of scholarly knowledge, that only changed its attire while in transit, with facts or theories supposedly travelling without changing their content through languages, cultures, or disciplinary dialects, has long informed the politics of science’s propagation and popularisation, prioritising the academic content of communicated science over its potential to be understood by the non-academic public. Various linear models of how knowledge travels across languages and cultures underlie the modernisation-theory-based approaches to the “spread” and “communication” of science, linking thus science’s history with its present.

Therefore, the conference equally asks about the different modes of understanding translation and scholarly thinking about translation (termed ‘translation knowledge’ by Lieven D’hulst and Yves Gambier) and their repercussions. Which different ‘translation knowledges’ exist in different disciplines and how do they change over time? Which different vocabularies of translation exist, and how do they resonate with those in other fields and disciplines? Which consequences do different ‘translation knowledges’ have for the understanding of science in science-reflexive disciplines (philosophy, history, sociology of science, etc.)? How do changes of ‘translation knowledge’ impact the politics of science, science communication, discussions on technology acceptance, or the involvement of laypeople into the knowledge production labelled as citizen science? Which new conceptual or technical tools are developed, or old tools adjusted, to accommodate the changes to ‘translation knowledge’?

We welcome applications for entire panels as well as individual contributions. Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes in length. Sections consist of either four presentations or three presentations with commentary and last 120 minutes, including discussion. Applications for round-tables – a discussion-oriented format focusing on a common theme, consisting of up to five speakers and a moderator, allowing at least 60 minutes for general discussion – are explicitly encouraged. Please submit abstracts of approximately half a page in length using our submission form. For sections, a short introduction to the section should be submitted in addition to the abstracts of the individual presentations. If of equal quality, sections that span academic generations will be given preference. While the preference will be given to the applications that relate to the overall topic, we will accept applications on all topics of history of medicine, science, and technology.

Languages of the conference will be English and German.

Please submit proposals by 15 February 2026, using the online submission form on the GWMT website (www.gwmt.de). Please note: This is an in-person conference; exceptions are only possible for accessibility purposes.

CFP: Social and Humanities Research in/on Central and Eastern Europe: Envisioning Futures from a Tumultuous Present

 In 2025, TOPOS, the journal for philosophy and cultural studies, celebrates its 25th anniversary. To mark the occasion, the editorial team and the Department of Social Sciences at the European Humanities University will organize an on-site conference titled “Social and Humanities Research in/on Central and Eastern Europe: Envisioning Futures from a Tumultuous Present,” which will take place on December 12-13, 2025, in Vilnius.

Social and Humanities Research in/on Central and Eastern Europe: Envisioning Futures from a Tumultuous Present

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European Humanities University, 01126 Vilnius (Lithuania)

12.12.2025 - 13.12.2025

Bewerbungsschluss: 10.11.2025

We want to take this anniversary as an opportunity for joint reflections on the state of social and humanities research into the region of Central and Eastern Europe, and of that region’s significance to exemplarily bundle questions in social and cultural studies. We plan several conference panels devoted to the following questions:

What are the main challenges in academic knowledge production about Central and Eastern Europe today? Which trends do you observe?

How do you see the role of academic journals as platforms for the exchange of knowledge (given the rising importance of various digital platforms – YouTube, etc.)? Do journals have a particular significance in and for the region? Which possibilities do you see for collaboration and exchange between different journals focusing on the region?

How does academic work in the humanities and social sciences refer to, and react to, the mass migration of researchers due to war, repressions, etc., or of outright political violence against them? How does the particular potential to resist oppression traditionally ascribed to humanities scholarship present itself under today’s circumstances?

Knowledge production in Central and Eastern Europe has historically struggled to enter international debates and dialogue on matters related to the region.  What is the situation of this asymmetry today?  How can the marginalization of voices from the region be overcome?

After the conference, we envision publishing a special Forum section in a 2026 TOPOS issue presenting and continuing the panel discussions.

Working language – English

We cordially invite everyone interested to participate in the conference. To apply, please fill out the form at this link: https://forms.gle/K6hhib2pTpzYnaC46

The application deadline is 10 November 2025.

The outcome of the proposal review process will be communicated by November 15.

The conference is free of charge.

hybrid conference "History of science among historical sciences" (Polish)

  Zapraszamy na konferencję „Historia nauki wśród nauk historycznych”

🗓️ 4 grudnia 2025 r.

🏛️ Pałac Staszica, Instytut Historii Nauki PAN oraz w trybie online

W programie – wystąpienia i dyskusje poświęcone miejscu historii nauki wśród innych dyscyplin historycznych, jej tożsamości oraz współczesnym metodom badawczym.

🧩 Organizatorzy:

Sekcja Historii Nauki i Techniki Komitetu Nauk Historycznych PAN

oraz Instytut Historii Nauki PAN

Program konferencji:

🕚 11.00 – Otwarcie konferencji

prof. Iwona Arabas (Instytut Historii Nauki PAN)

prof. Jaromir Jeszke (Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza)

🕥 11.15 – Sesja I

🎙️ prof. Wojciech Wrzosek (UAM)

Historia nauki jako dyscyplina historyczna.

🎙️ prof. Leszek Zasztowt (UW)

Czy historia nauki jest jedynie częścią historii kultury?

Historia nauki a historia społeczna i antropologia. Kilka uwag.

🎙️ prof. Tomasz Falkowski (UAM)

Historia nauki i pytanie o kryteria jej tożsamości.

🎙️ prof. Wiktor Werner (UAM)

Jak cyfrowe metody badawcze mogą zmienić historiografię nauki?

Możliwości, zagrożenia, problemy.

💬 12.15–13.00 – Dyskusja

🕐 13.00 – Sesja II

🎙️ prof. Maciej Górny (Instytut Historii PAN)

Postkolonializm, transfer wiedzy i Europa Środkowo-Wschodnia.

Czy perspektywa postkolonialna przystaje do historii nauki w tej części świata?

🎙️ dr Alexej Lochmatow (Uniwersytet Hebrajski w Jerozolimie)

Między ekspansją i „wspaniałą izolacją”: Historia nauki wśród nauk historycznych.

🎙️ dr Jan Surman (Instytut Masaryka i Archiwum Czeskiej Akademii Nauk)

Historia nauki: co zrobić z dyscypliną, która się sama zdekonstruowała?

🎙️ dr Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen (Universität zu Köln)

Historical matters: Materiality and the history of science in modern Polish history.

💬 14.00–14.45 – Dyskusja

🕓 14.45–15.00 – Zakończenie konferencji

prof. Iwona Arabas (IHN PAN)

prof. Jaromir Jeszke (UAM)

📍 Miejsce: Sala A27, Pałac Staszica, ul. Nowy Świat 72, Warszawa

💻 Udział online: prosimy o kontakt na adres ihn@ihnpan.pl, aby uzyskać dane dostępowe

15th Bukovyna International Historical and Local History Conference Dedicated to the 150th Anniversary of the Yuri Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University

15th Bukovyna International Historical and Local History Conference Dedicated to the 150th Anniversary of the Yuri Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, Chernivtsi, October 17–18, 2025, hybrid.

Program and zoom links: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FxNk5pU1CSXNbkgwptmOX8YZfBcLsLTK/view?usp=sharing

Call for papers: Navigating Epistemic, Cultural, and Legal Translations: Processes, Hierarchies, Spaces

 Call for papers: Navigating Epistemic, Cultural, and Legal Translations: Processes, Hierarchies, Spaces - Regensburg 04/2025

Organiser: Leibniz ScienceCampus Europe and America in the Modern World (University of Regensburg & Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies)

Place: Regensburg (Germany)

Time: 23 - 25 April 2025

Deadline for Paper Proposals: 31 October 2024

All cultural, social, political and legal exchanges involve processes of transfer and translation. They include not only linguistic and cultural transfer, but also the transposition and therefore resemantization of meanings, symbols, institutions, norms, practices, and discourses across time, spaces and legal systems.

For instance, avantgarde movements, such as surrealism, as a transregional phenomenon comprising Europe and the Americas, translated cultural meaning back and forward within and between regional or linguistic contexts and artistic forms. Other processes of transfer and translations include networked social and political movements such as Latin American or East European feminisms. Legal orders – both domestic and international – are also shaped by processes of transfer and translation. Recent approaches in comparative law seek to take into account movements of norms and their contextualization. And even the language and vocabulary of international law, which is associated with the idea of universality, seems to be approached, adapted and applied differently by state and non-state actors in different locations. All these processes of cultural, social, and legal transfer and translation can be analyzed in terms of traveling ideas, practices, and aesthetics whose meanings, functions, and reception change in their new surroundings, particularly when polycentric, post-colonial, or post-imperial settings are at play.

Individual and collective actors – who navigate, renegotiate, and challenge interpretations and meanings – play important roles as intermediaries. Alongside social and cultural structures, they make transregional transfer processes interactive, interconnected, and productive. However, these processes also go hand in hand with substantial scopes for at times unexpected adaptations, contestatory re-appropriations, or creative re-translations. They evolve in contexts of local, regional and global power imbalances, cultural differences, and historical legacies of colonial or imperial inequalities, which engender frictions (Tsing), effects of mimicry (Bhabha), but also spark potential for cultural and social innovation. Hence, moving beyond the idea of translation processes conceived as uncontested one-way streets in neutral spaces, our aim is to shed light on the multifaceted implications of translation, transfer, and circulation of culturally situated knowledge and (legal) norms from different disciplinary, theoretical, and empirical perspectives.

Combining area studies-focused research in the social sciences, cultural studies, media studies, and literary studies, the conference seeks to attract a wide range of papers that analyse processes of transfer and translation in polycentric contexts. It focuses on the transatlantic entanglements of the Americas with Western and Southern Europe, and of the Americas with Eastern Europe - broadly defined to include East and East-Central Europe, Southeast Europe, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia - from the 18th century to the present. Our aim is to promote a multidisciplinary dialogue on the analysis, theoretical frameworks and broader narrativisation of transfer and translation processes.

Further information can be found in the Call for Papers, downloadable here: https://forhistiur.net/media/nachrichten/CfP_LSC_Conference_2025.pdf

The Shevchenko Scientific Society in the Context of Ukrainian Intellectual History – 150th Anniversary Conference

 hybrid event: The Shevchenko Scientific Society in the Context of Ukrainian Intellectual History – 150th Anniversary Conference. May 19 @ 9:00 am - 7:00 pm EDT / 15:00 - 1:00 CET

UKRAINIAN INSTITUTE OF AMERICA, 2 E 79TH ST, NEW YORK, NY 10075

The conference features three panels with scholars from the US, Ukraine, Canada, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, and Austria discussing the history of the establishment of the Society, the contexts of its activity, and its influence on Ukrainian intellectual and cultural life from its founding to the present day.

Details and registation: shevchenko.org/event/150th-anniversary-of-shevchenko-scientific-society-conference/ .

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

9:00 – 9:15

Welcome from Vitaly Chernetsky, conference organizer, First Vice President of the Shevchenko Scientific Society

9:15 – 11:00

Panel I: Nineteenth-Century Ukrainian Intellectual Life under Russian Imperial Rule

Chair: Halyna Hryn (Shevchenko Scientific Society/Harvard University)

George Grabowicz (Harvard University): Rethinking the Cyrilo-Methodian Brotherhood: Problems of Historiography and Some New and Old Aporias

Serhiy Bilenky (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta): Before NTSh-A: Scholarship and Politics in 1870s Kyiv

Fabian Bauman (University of Heidelberg): Academic Ukrainophilism and Ukrainian Politics in the Russian Empire under the Ems Ukaz

Discussant: Susan Smith-Peter (College of Staten Island, City University of New York)

11:00   Coffee

11: 15 – 1:15

Panel ІІ: The Shevchenko Scientific Society and Its Impact, in Galicia and Beyond

Chair: Oksana Kis (University of Richmond/National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)

Martin Rohde (University of Vienna): Shevchenko Scientific Society and the Making of Ukrainian “National Science”, 1892–1939

Tomasz Hen-Konarski (Polish Academy of Sciences): The Sorcerer and His Apprentice: Kyrylo Studyns′kyi and Amvrozii Androkhovych as Historians of the Greek Catholic Clerical Education

Jan Surman (Czech Academy of Sciences): (Re)writing Ukrainian Academic Language from Habsburg Galicia to the Soviet Union

Discussant: Frank Sysyn (University of Alberta)

1:15 – 2:30        Lunch Break

2:30 – 4:30

Panel III: Ukrainian Scholarship and Its Sociopolitical Contexts, from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

Chair: Olena Nikolayenko (Fordham University)

Anton Kotenko (University of Düsseldorf): “Scientific Society” or an “Institution of the Most Radical Ukrainophile party”? NTSh in the Materials of the Romanov Imperial Censorship

Maryna Paliienko (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, New York University): Ukrainian Diaspora Archives During and After World War II as a Target of Nazi and Soviet Security Services

Steven Seegel (University of Texas, Austin): The NTSh and Geography: On Some Challenges and Legacies in the Making of Modern Ukrainian Maps, from the 1860s to Stepan Rudnyts’kyi and The February 24th Archive Project

Discussant: Vitaly Chernetsky (University of Kansas)

4:30     Coffee

4:45     Concluding Discussion

6:00 – 7:00

Closing Reception

World Copernican Congress

 From 12 to 15 September 2023, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń will host the final stage of the World Copernican Congress. The Congress is being held in Poland in 2023 to mark the 550th anniversary of the birth of Nicolaus Copernicus. The main objective of the Congress is to present the state of research on the life and work of the eminent scientist and astronomer and his impact on the development of science, culture and the arts. Details: https://kopernik550.umk.pl/en/programme .

The event is organised by Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn and the Institute of the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Due to the rich and still alive and developing Copernican traditions in these centres, the Congress will have a rolling formula. The official opening of the proceedings is scheduled for 19 February 2023 in Toruń - the anniversary of Nicolaus Copernicus' birth and, at the same time a celebration of the University of Toruń. The proceedings will then be held successively in Kraków (24-26 May), Olsztyn (21-24 June) and Toruń (12-15 September).

Hybrid conference: The Sputnik Factor. Scientific and Technological Global Competition, Collaboration and Circulation of Knowledge in the post-Sputnik years

Hybrid conference: The Sputnik Factor. Scientific and Technological  Global Competition, Collaboration and Circulation of Knowledge in the post-Sputnik years. May 18-20, Barcelona and zoom 

On 4 October 1957 the Soviets launched the first unmanned satellite, the Sputnik I. As Walter A. McDougall has argued, the Sputnik I was a turning point in the history of the USA. A reluctant Eisenhower first and an enthusiast Kennedy later promoted a stronger integration between basic scientific research and military oriented research. Basic research was lavishly funded and oriented by the central government. At the same time collaboration with the Soviets was resumed and one year later the Lacy-Zarubin agreement was signed. Both emotional and rational factors played a part. In early 1960s most US economists were persuaded that given the current rate of growth of the two countries sooner or later Soviet economy would overcome that of the USA. In 1961, Paul Samuelson even foresaw that given the current growth pace of the two countries in a period between 23 and 36 years Soviet economy would overtake that of the USA . In 1963, in his famous ‘white heat speech’ Harold Wilson declared that Britain had to copy the Soviet kind of integration between science and industry. Even if the West maintained a global scientific and technological superiority over USSR, the Soviets were competitive on certain crucial sectors, such as tank production and space technology.  The perspective that Soviet science and technology could compete with that of the West had also a global impact in the competition between the two super-powers in Africa and Asia.

 This workshop aims to explore the impact of the “Sputnik shock” in Eastern Europe, in the West, in the confrontation between the two blocs in the developing countries and in the making of the International and Inter-European scientific organization and collaborative project. Indeed, between 1954 and 1964, the CERN, EURATOM, the European Space Research Organization (ESRO), the European Space Research Vehicle Launcher Development (ELDO) and the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) were founded. A number of other intra-European scientific networks were envisaged, but did not see the light, such as a NATO project for a European MIT.

In same cases this impact was direct, in other cases it was rather indirect. During the Cold War any cultural, political and economic activity in the Western Bloc was in a way conditioned by what happened in the Eastern Bloc, and vice versa: what the Soviets were doing or what it was believed they were doing influenced the decisions taken in the West and vice versa, even if there was no direct causal connection. Michael Gordin's book on the Velikovsky affair is an example of how the Cold War context, the fear that the Soviets could take the lead in scientific research, shaped the debate around Velikovsky, even if the Soviets played no active role at all in the quarrel.

the workshop can be attended either face-to-face at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona

25/27 Ramon Trias Fargas

Mercè Rodoreda building, room 23S05

or via zoom. Those interested in receiving a zoom link may write to daniele.cozzoli@upf.edu<mailto:daniele.cozzoli@upf.edu>

Programme

Thursday 18th of May

 14:30 Welcome and introduction

 15:00 – 15:45 John Krige (Georgiatech and Science Po, Paris)

 “US global collaboration/competition in the scientific and technological Cold War."

 15:45 – 16:30 Angela Romano (University of Bologna) “European or Transatlantic? Competition or cooperation? WEU Assembly’s debates on how to respond to USSR space achievements.”

 16:30 – 16:45 coffee break

 16: 45 – 17: 30 Matteo Gerlini (University of Siena)

 “The European Commission Joint research centre and the quest for its nuclear reactor type between USA and USSR.”

 17: 30 – 18:15 Simone Turchetti (University of Manchester)

“Globalizing Cold War competition through scientific collaboration: the case of SEATO’s science initiatives, 1957-1977”

 18:15 – 19:00 Giulia Bentivoglio (University of Padua) (on line)

 “In search of modernity. The United Kingdom and Italy between technological gap and European integration”

Friday 19th of May

9:00 – 09:45

Roberto Lalli (Polytechnic of Turin)

“The CERN as a model? The establishments of pan-European schemes of cooperation in physics in post-Sputnik Era”

 09:45 – 10:30

Pedro Ruíz (University of Valencia) and Pablo Soler Ferran (Independent scholar, Madrid)

“The Spanish nuclear industry and the trade relationships to ensure the supply of

enriched uranium

10:30 – 11:15

Giuliana Gemelli (University of Bologna) (on line)

“James Killian and the MIT Revolution in the Sixties”

 11:15 – 11:30 coffee break

 11:30 – 12:15

Daniele Cozzoli, (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona)

“The National Academy of Science and the Collaboration with USSR from the Lacy-Zarubin Agreement to the détente (1957 - 1979)”

12:15 – 13:00 Slava Gerovitch (Massachussets Institute of Technology)

“We live in a prison”: Informal international contacts of Soviet mathematicians.”

 13: 00 – 14:30 lunch

 14: 30 – 15:15

 Alexei Kojevnikov (University of British Columbia)

“A Little Sputnik That Could”: Poetic Technologies and Historical Future”

 15:15 – 16:00

Doubravka Olsakova (Czech Academy of Science)

Language and Future Shock: Army Dictionaries, Linguistics, and New Technologies in Eastern Europe

16:00 – 16:45 Jan Surman (Czech Academy of Science) and Lukas Becht (University of Vienna)

“Futures after Sputnik: Future Studies in Central Europe and multiple emancipations”

 16:45 – 17:00 coffee break

 17:00- 17:45 Olga Dubrovina (University of Padua)

“Moscow Space Future Forum of 1987: the Soviet space program 30 years after the launch of the first Sputnik.”

17:45 – 18:30 Tatiana Kasperski (Centre for Baltic and East European Studies, Södertörn University, Stockholm) tatiana.kasperski@sh.se<mailto:tatiana.kasperski@sh.se>

“Radioactive Waste Under Capitalism and Socialism: Environmental Consequences of the East-West Technological Competition in the First Decades of the Atomic Age”

Saturday 20th of May

09:00 - 09:45 Laurence Roche Nye (Sorbonne University)

“A capacity to cooperate. The French-Soviet long duration agreement in space sciences and technology. (1966-1992)”

09:45 – 10:30 Paul Josephson (Colby College)

"Circulating Waters:  Cold War Projects in Hydropower, East and West"

 10:30 – 11:15 Mary Augusta Brazelton (University of Cambridge)

“Biomedical research and development in China during the transition to Maoism”

11:15: 11:30 coffee break

11:30 – 12:15 Steffi Marung (Leipzig University)

“After sputnik and after empire: The reconfiguration of international African Studies since the early 1960s”

12:30 – 13:15 Justina Aniceta Turkowska (University of Edinburgh)

“The (re)birth of scientific detail in the age of planetary knowledge: Geoscientific expertise and education in 1960s West Africa in the context of the Cold War.”

hybrid conference: Stefan Zamecki (1936-2022) – in memoriam (Polish), 17.04.2023

hybrid conference: Stefan Zamecki (1936-2022) – in memoriam (Polish), 17.04.2023 Pracownia Naukoznawstwa IHN PAN oraz Komisja Historii Nauki PAU zapraszają do wzięcia udziału w konferencji Stefan Zamecki (1936–2022) – in memoriam. Obrady są poświęcone śp. prof. Stefanowi Zameckiemu, który od 1975 r. prowadził w Zakładzie Historii Nauki, Oświaty i Techniki PAN (od 1994 Instytut Historii Nauki PAN) badania z zakresu naukoznawstwa, historii i filozofii nauki oraz historii chemii, a w latach 1999-2018 pełnił funkcję redaktora naczelnego „Kwartalnika Historii Nauki i Techniki”. Obrady rozpoczną się w poniedziałek, 17 kwietnia 2023 r. o godzinie 14:45 za pośrednictwem platformy ZOOM. Osoby zainteresowane uczestnictwem w konferencji proszone są o kontakt mailowy z dr. Mateuszem Hübnerem (mhubner@ihnpan.pl lub mateuszhubner@wp.pl). Poster: https://www.ihnpan.pl/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Konferencja-Stefan-Zamecki.pdf

online event: History of Botanics. Quarterly conference of the Commission for the History of Science PAU (Polish)

online event: History of Botanics. Quarterly conference of the Commission for the History of Science PAU (Polish), March 15, 10:00-13:30 CET Kwartalna Konferencja Komisji Historii Nauki PAU, Historia botaniki, 15 marca (środa) 2023, godz. 10.00-13.30 Miejsce: platforma Zoom. Organizatorzy: Kwartalna Konferencja Komisji Historii Nauki PAU Sekcja Historii Botaniki Polskiego Towarzystwa Botanicznego Program: https://pau.krakow.pl/platforma_wymiany_naukowej/zaproszenia/2023/KHN_KWART_progr_2023_03_15.pdf Details: https://pau.krakow.pl/index.php/pl/platforma-wymiany-naukowej-pau/konferencje/kwartalne-konferencje-komisji-historii-nauki-pau Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83639703920?pwd=VGQ1WnRhRVMvb0swdmtxVC8rbCszZz09 Identyfikator spotkania: 836 3970 3920 Kod dostępu: 897021

Online Conference “Thomas Samuel Kuhn versus Nicolaus Copernicus and the Copernican revolution”.

Online Conference “Thomas Samuel Kuhn versus Nicolaus Copernicus and the Copernican revolution”. 550th Anniversary of the Birth of Nicolaus Copernicus. 15 March 2023 (Wednesday). Time: 16:30–18:30 CET – Central European Time Equivalent time: 10:30–12:30 CDT – Central Daylight Time (Norman, Oklahoma, USA) Institutional organizers: • Komisja Historii Nauki PAU (Commission on the History of Science, Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences); • Pracownia Naukoznawstwa IHN PAN (Science-of-Science and Science Studies Research Unit, Institute for the History for Science, Polish Academy of Sciences). Program • 16:30–17:30 (CET – Central European Time): Prof. Peter Barker (Department of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Oklahoma, Norman OK, USA), “Islamicate Science after 1500 as Kuhnian Normal Science: What is Missing from the Copernican Revolution Account of the History of Science?” Paper and discussion. • 17:30–18:30 (CET – Central European Time): Prof. Michał Kokowski (Institute for the History for Science, Polish Academy of Sciences), “Thomas Samuel Kuhn: Nicolaus Copernicus and the Copernican Revolution – Historical Facts and Interpretations, Strengths and Weaknesses of the Kuhnian Approaches”. Paper and discussion. Join a Zoom meeting https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83486662085?pwd=RDhjQ2t2RmdITkZFM256MzRQdXcyQT09 . Meeting ID: 834 8666 2085 Access code: 339801

What Good Is Philosophy? - Ukraine Benefit Conference

What Good Is Philosophy? - Ukraine Benefit Conference (from Aaron J. Wendland) Dear Friends, How are you? As Vision Fellow in Public Philosophy at King’s College London, I am organizing a major online benefit event for the Ukrainian academy, entitled: ‘What Good Is Philosophy? – The Role of the Academy in a Time of Crisis’. Here is the link: https://civic.ukma.edu.ua/benefit/ Keynotes will be delivered by world-renowned author, Margaret Atwood, one of the most celebrated scholars of Ukrainian history, Timothy Snyder, and two of Ukraine’s preeminent public intellectuals, Mychailo Wynnyckyj and Volodymyr Yermolenko. Lectures will also be given by some of the most influential philosophers writing today, including Peter Adamson, Elizabeth Anderson, Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Agnes Callard, Quassim Cassam, Tim Crane, Simon Critchley, David Enoch, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Sally Haslanger, Angie Hobbs, Barry Lam, Melissa Lane, Dominic Lopes, Kate Manne, Jeff McMahan, Jennifer Nagel, Philip Pettit, Kieran Setiya, Jason Stanley, Timothy Williamson, and Jonathan Wolff. The conference will be produced by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, and it will be broadcast on their YouTube channel on 17-19 March 2023. It can also be streamed here: https://munkschool.utoronto.ca/kma-conference ‘What Good Is Philosophy? – A Benefit Conference for Ukraine’ aims to raise the funds required to establish a Centre for Civic Engagement at Kyiv Mohyla Academy. This Centre will provide support for academic and civic institutions in Ukraine to counteract the destabilizing impact that Russia’s invasion has had on Ukrainian higher education and civilian life. By assisting Ukrainian students and scholars today, this Centre will also help pave the way for a vibrant and engaged post-war Ukraine. This benefit conference is designed to provide individual academics, members of the public, colleges and universities, professional associations, charitable foundations, and private companies with a way to support students, scholars, and civic institutions in Ukraine. With that said, you can make a one-time tax-deductible donation here: https://civic.ukma.edu.ua/donate/ You can also help assist the academy in Ukraine by sharing this post and/or posting the following link to your various social media accounts: https://civic.ukma.edu.ua/benefit/ Finally, thank you very much for all your time and consideration. I certainly appreciate your support, and I’m sure my Ukrainian colleagues do, too! And most importantly, I hope all is well with you! Sincerely, -Aaron

Conf: “Minority science” in the short 20th century: Imagining science from the margins of academia

Conf: “Minority science” in the short 20th century: Imagining science from the margins of academia, 30.03.-01.04.2023, hybrid. URL: https://imagesofscience.wordpress.com/166-2/ Conference of the project Lumina Quaeruntur project “Images of science” in Czechoslovakia 1918-1945-1968. March 30 - April 1 2023, The Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague and online. 20th century is characterised by manifold processes of redrawing social, cultural, and geographic boundaries – from the fall of empires, to the end of the Soviet Union. Scholars were involved in these redrawings in manifold roles. They could be facilitators of change but also those affected by it. In our conference we will look at those scholars who were located at the margins of the academia, but also became members of minorities due to expulsion or change of political borders. Cultural historians have accentuated that being an “other” can allow a more distant and critical perception of one’s surrounding society, a thesis which we want to investigate closer by looking at scholars and scientists and their imaginations of, and relation to, respective “mainstreams.” By connecting epistemic and social othering and marginalisation we do not want to blur boundaries between them, but on the contrary, investigate how the boundaries between "social" and "epistemic" are drawn and how these entities are interrelated, and thus to uncover how (academic) power relations are entangled with those in the society at large. To participate online please register at https://www.eventbrite.de/e/conference-hybrid-minority-science-in-the-short-20th-century-tickets-511692795927 to participate in person please contact Jan Surman. Thursday, March 30 15:30-16:00 Registration and Introduction 16:00-19:00 Session I Chair: Galina Babak Oksana Blashkiv: Slavic Studies and/or “minority science”: the case of Dmytro Čyževsky Ekaterina Shashlova: Migrants and new knowledge. Franco-German cultural transfer between the world wars Maria Silina: Museum practitioners in exile and the creation of Russian-centred narratives in the Soviet Union Patrick Flack: Roman Jakobson: between Russian Emigration and International Science Friday, March 31 9:00-12:00 Session II Chair: Tomáš Gecko Natalia Aleksiun: Jewish Physicians and Minority Medicine in the Second Polish Republic Lara Bonneau: “general Science of art” (die allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft), Emil Utitz, a German-speaking Czech philosopher (1883-1956) Florian Ruttner: “Religious affiliation: Dissident”. Josef Doppler and the Margins of Academia Laurens Schlicht: Franziska Baumgarten on Gender Identity, the Values of Science, and the Social Role of Psychology, ca. 1920–1950 13:30-15:00 Session III Chair: Joris Vandendriessche Maria Pirogovskaya: Multiple Minority and the Metropolitan Science: One Controversy about Tibetan Studies under Stalin Filip Herza: Researching Ruthenia: Science on the Margins – Marginals in Science Michael Wedekind: Interwar Minority Scholarship in South Tyrol 15:30-17:30 Session IV Chair: Jan Surman Kai Johann Willms: Polish-Jewish Sociologists in Interwar Poland and in American Exile Friedrich Pollack: Empowerment and suppression. Sorbian historiography and the institutionalisation of Sorbian Studies in the GDR Göktuğ İpek: Being a Leftist Academician in New “Democratic” Turkey After The WWII Saturday, April 1 9:00-12:00 Session V Chair: Michaela Šmidrkalová Slava Gerovitch: Playing the System: Soviet Mathematicians’ Strategies of Circumvention Irina Antoshchuk: Russian-speaking computer scientists in the UK as immigrant minority: revealing unexpected advantages and disadvantages Elisa Satjukow: At the Margins of History: The German Sonderweg of East and Southeast European Studies after the End of the Cold War Tina Magazzini: Romani studies between academic power relations and EU funding: methodological field notes

CALL FOR PAPER, UNIVERSEUM 2023 ANNUAL CONFERENCE, 4-7 JULY, UNIVERSITY OF WROCLAW, POLAND

 CALL FOR PAPER, UNIVERSEUM 2023 ANNUAL CONFERENCE, 4-7 JULY, UNIVERSITY OF WROCLAW, POLAND

Dear colleagues,
Dear friends,

First of all the colleagues from the board join me to wish you all a warmfull and stupendous new year.
Our best thought are for our ukrainian colleagues and their remarkable courage towards the war: let’s hope this year will see the end of this barbaric invasion.

Facing lots of challenging issues within society the role of our community is even more acute. Being at the interface between the broader public and universities, between local communities and academics is a very important but difficult role in these polarized times. More than ever, the role of academic heritage is paramount in developing tools for creating and supporting dialogue, engagement and participation of the wider community and to make scientific knowledge accessible and intelligible.

More than ever the role of Universeum should enhance our capacity to work together in that direction and facilitate the sharing of our professional practices and knowledge.

Our next annual conference, that will be host by the University of Wroclaw in Poland, 4th-7th July 2023, will give us the opportunity to move forward in that direction. During the 2023 Universeum meeting, we want to reflect on and share our “Experience of Academic Heritage”.

According to ICOM’s new definition of museums of 2022, museums ‘operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing’. How do these ways of experiencing apply to academic heritage? In this UNIVERSEUM annual meeting, we wanted to explore how this is resonating with your practice and with how your audiences are experiencing academic heritage.

We would like to move beyond only celebrating to also critically reflect about academic heritage and the experiences it offers and provides. Are there other directions in which you would like to take the interpretation and experience of university collections further? Should we be doing more with what we have? What are the opportunities and obstacles in realising our full potential within our collections, museums, institutions?

Subtheme 1: By whom and for whom?
University collections are presented in many different ways and are experienced by different communities and groups. Increasingly, university museums are working together with various groups to agree on themes, approaches, and interpretations of academic heritage.
How conscious are we of our curation and interpretation processes and how these are experienced by different audiences?
How can we find out if the experience is received as we intended and by whom? How can we learn from this? How do we react to unexpected outcomes?
Does who is involved in the design of these experiences affect the end result and how these are experienced?

Subtheme 2: Experiencing difficult heritage
Experiencing academic heritage can go beyond having fun and joy. They can also include encountering issues and ideas from a long history of academic practices and institutional history that make us uncomfortable and can be disturbing.
What is the role of university museums and collection custodians in this process?
How can they facilitate and encourage debates on difficult heritage in an effective way and not hide from them?
Subtheme 3: Media and methods of interpretation
When designing experiences of academic heritage, we use various means in our disposal for presenting and interpreting these. Some of these, like storytelling, have remained unchanged over the years, while others are constantly evolving, like the use of new technologies and social media.
How do our media and methods for setting up experiences of academic heritage, for instance the language and tools we use, affect the messages we are trying to communicate?
And whom do we involve in the process of selecting and designing interpretative tools and approaches?
How can we evaluate their effectiveness?

During the 2023 Universeum meeting, we want to explore different ways of encouraging discussion and debate, as well as allow as many voices from the community to be heard as possible. We would like to combine short papers, with longer in-depth contributions that reflect more broadly on these themes rather than present specific projects, as well as invite dialogue and discussions from all participants.
SUBMISSIONS
Format of submissions
Under these themes, we invite proposals for:
5-minute talks
15-minute talks
posters
Guidelines for submissions
You will find all necessary information and the abstract template on Universeum website <https://www.universeum-network.eu/evenements/universeum-2023-annual-meeting/>.

The conference language is English. We welcome contributions from cultural heritage professionals and academics, but also post‐graduate students who are encouraged to present.

Please send your abstract proposal (max. 200 words), with an indication of the session you are submitting to (sub-theme 1, sub-theme 2, or 3), plus a short biographical note highlighting main research interests and/or field of professional experience (max. 50 words) to the following email address using the abstract template <https://www.universeum-network.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Universeum_abstract_template_2023-1.doc> by Tuesday 28 February 2023: sekretarz.muzeauczelniane@gmail.com <mailto:sekretarz.muzeauczelniane@gmail.com>
Travel Grants
The UNIVERSEUM Board is able to offer a small number of travel grants of up to 300 Euros each to students whose proposal (for either a poster or a talk) to present at the conference has been accepted.
You can tick the related box if you want to apply in the abstract template <https://www.universeum-network.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Universeum_abstract_template_2023-1.doc>.

Programme Committee:
Frédérique Andry-Cazin, Sorbonne-Universities, UPMC (France), Treasurer of UNIVERSEUM
Natalia Bahlawan, Jagiellonian University Museum (Poland)
Esther Boeles, University of Amsterdam (NL), Secretary of UNIVERSEUM
Marek Bukowski, Medical University of Gdańsk (Poland), Vice-President of the Polish Association of University Museums
Maria Economou, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow (UK), Vice-President of UNIVERSEUM
Hubert Kowalski, Warsaw University (Poland), President of the Polish Association of University Museums
Magdalena Muskała, Medical University of Białystok (Poland), Vice-President of the Polish Association of University Museums
Marta Piszczatowska, Warsaw University Museum (Poland), Vice-President of the Polish Association of University Museums
Joanna Ślaga, Jagiellonian University Museum (Poland), Vice-President of the Polish Association of University Museums
Sébastien Soubiran, University of Strasbourg (France), President of UNIVERSEUM
Martin Stricker, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Germany), Vice-President of UNIVERSEUM
Marta Szaszkiewicz, (Museum of the University of Gdańsk), (Poland), Secretary of the Polish Association of University Museums

Repressed stories. Anti-Semitism at the University of Poznań in the years 1919-1939, December 12, 2022, Poznan&online

 Repressed stories. Anti-Semitism at the University of Poznań in the years 1919-1939, December 12, 2022, Poznan&online

12 grudnia 2022 roku na Uniwersytecie im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu odbędzie się konferencja naukowa pt. „Wyparte historie. Antysemityzm na Uniwersytecie Poznańskim w latach 1919-1939”. Podczas spotkania zostaną przedstawione wyniki badań, które dotyczyły sytuacji żydowskich studentek i studentów na Uniwersytecie Poznańskim w okresie międzywojennym. Konferencja rozpocznie się w poniedziałek 12 grudnia o godz.10.00 w Sali Lubrańskiego w Collegium Minus UAM przy ul. Wieniawskiego 1.

Dodatkowe informacje: https://wyparte-historie.amu.edu.pl/

Call for Papers: Nuclear Research in Medicine after the Second World War. Vienna 20.03.2023 - 21.03.2023, Deadline 15.11.2022

 Call for Papers: Nuclear Research in Medicine after the Second World War. Vienna 20.03.2023 - 21.03.2023, Deadline 15.11.2022

We seek proposals for a conference on the history of nuclear research in medicine. The conference will be held at the Medical University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna from the 20th to 21st of March 2023. Deadline for submissions is the 15th of November 2022.

NUCLEAR RESEARCH IN MEDICINE AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Nuclear research in medicine relies on a high degree of interaction. While the production of radioisotopes and the development of medical devices are carried out by physicists and engineers, chemists and pharmacists take over the syntheses of radiopharmaceuticals, while physicians focus on their application. In the absence of handbooks, industrially available devices, and radioisotopes, early specialists were also dependent on multilateral exchanges. These were fostered by post-war agreements for the peaceful use of atomic energy and international organizations such as the IAEA and WHO. Thus, the formation of nuclear medicine as discipline was the result of a global balancing and standardization process during the Cold War era. Its origins are traced in the first broad clinical applications of radioisotopes primarily in the United States and the United Kingdom just before the Second World War and continued with the worldwide dissemination of relevant knowledge and techniques that were mainly triggered by the United Nations international organizations. Nevertheless, in many countries, nuclear medicine did not get recognized as a medical specialty with separate residency training until the 1990s.

This symposium focuses on the emergence of nuclear medicine as an outcome of scientific collaboration and competition, boundary and interdisciplinary work, and encounters between various (inter)national stakeholders, as well as political, diplomatic, and scientific institutions. We welcome contributions that address the scientific, political, diplomatic, and social dimensions of these interactions, the knowledge, resources, and policies involved.

Potential topics include:

- Transnational cooperation and competition among researchers, clinical practitioners, institutions and disciplines

- Sharing of nuclear medicine knowledge, methods, materials, and spaces within Europe and around the globe

- Development of standards, rules, manuals, and measuring/imaging devices

- Political, social, and gendered aspects of scientific interaction, licensing, and regulatory governance of the field

- Safety, security, and disposal of radioactive waste produced by nuclear medical practices

- Hierarchies and networks of exchange

Venue

We are planning this symposium to be an in-person event, consisting of a welcome reception at the Medical University of Vienna on the evening of March 20 and lectures on the premises of the Austrian Academy of Sciences on March 21. The symposium will take place in English and is free of charge.

Abstract submission

To apply, please send an abstract (no longer than 250 words), a brief bio, and contact information (all in one word file) to Johannes Mattes, johannes.mattes@oeaw.ac.at, by 15 November 2022. We will let you know about our decision by mid-December. Part of our plan is to publish a collective peer-reviewed special journal issue based on the final submissions of the participants.

Walter Benjamin in the East – Networks, Conflicts, and Reception. International Conference at the Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, July 7-9, 2022.

 With keynotes by Sergei Romashko and Oxana Timofeeva, and a roundtable with contributions from Kateryna Mishchenko, Adam Lipszyc, and Christian Ferencz-Flatz.

WALTER BENJAMIN IN THE EAST – NETWORKS, CONFLICTS, AND RECEPTION

In late and post-Socialist contexts in Eastern Europe, the works of Walter Benjamin—a historical materialist thinker who travelled to the young Soviet Union in the 1920s—have incited various theoretical transfers, artistic engagements, and political appropriations. Benjamin’s ‘afterlife’ before and after the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc offers the possibility to map out manifold trajectories and networks of reception—ranging from research groups, artistic movements, and conferences, to translations, and publishing houses. Investigating their interactions allows us to decentralize the Eastern European space in going beyond a Moscow-based perspective on ‘Benjamin in the East.’ Conflicting receptions of Benjamin need to be studied in their specific geo-cultural, historical, and political contexts in order to show affinities and differences not only across languages and cultures. Tensions also occur in a variety of translational processes—transfers between theory, cultural practices, political activism, disciplinary fields, and vice versa.

The conference brings together scholars, translators, artists, activists, and editors from across Europe to collaboratively historicize these transfers across Walter Benjamin’s works and their reception. In doing so, we will also reflect on real and imaginary constructions of the East/West divide. These are prevalent not only in European societies but can also be constitutive to specific Eastern/Western academic perspectives on Walter Benjamin as a disciplinary figure that crosses geo-cultural borders and boundaries.

The event is free of charge. Please register in advance and specify the panels or sections that you want to attend under anmeldung@zfl-berlin.org.

Programm

Thursday, 7 Jun 2022

13.30

Sophia Buck (Oxford/ZfL), Caroline Adler (HU Berlin): Introduction

14.00 BENJAMIN’S EAST

Pavel Arsenev (University of Geneva): Benjamin’s Reception of the East (and then back again)

Iacopo Chiaravalli (University of Pisa): Benjamin on Soviet Art – A Neglected Interview in Its Proper Context

16.00 VISIT TO THE WALTER BENJAMIN ARCHIVE

Introduction by Ursula Marx (only for speakers)

19.00 KEYNOTE

Sergej A. Romashko (Moscow): Walter Benjamin / Moskau – Zwei Flächen eines Kristalls

Friday, 8 Jul 2022

10.00 RECEPTION UNTIL THE 1990s

Martin Küpper (CAU Kiel): Die Zertrümmerung der Aura als Moment der kommunistischen Revolution – Über Walter Benjamins Einfluss auf den ästhetischen Funktionalismus in der DDR

Konstantin Baehrens (University of Potsdam): Lukács liest Benjamin – Zwischen formaler Distanzierung und kritisch-realistischem Ernstnehmen

Gábor Gángó (University of Erfurt): Walter Benjamin and the Cultural Turn of the Budapest School

13.30

Anna Zsellér, Károly Tóth (Elte Budapest): Kritik und Resignation – Möglichkeiten und Missstände der Benjamin-Rezeption in Ungarn bis 1989

Anna Förster (ZfL): “A rather secretive affair” – Walter Benjamin in 1970s Czechoslovakia

15.30 ARTISTIC RESPONSES UNTIL THE 1990s

Isabel Jacobs (Queen Mary University of London): Unmaking Art – Walter Benjamin’s Resurrection in Yugoslavia

Deirdre Madeleine Smith (University of Pittsburgh): The Influence of Benjamin on the New Art Practice of Socialist Yugoslavia

18.30 KEYNOTE

Oxana Timofeeva (St. Petersburg): Translating Benjamin from Theory to Practice – Russian Edition

Saturday, 9 Jul 2022

10.00 ARTISTIC RESPONSES SINCE THE 1990s

Bogdan Popa (Transilvania University of Brașov): From Historical Materialism to Cultural Studies – Walter Benjamin and his Late Revival in Romanian Film Theory

Anna Migliorini (University of Florence): Radu Jude’s Movie(s) and Benjamin

13.00 RECEPTION SINCE THE 1990s

Markus Bauer (Berlin): Mimetische Lektüren Europas – Walter Benjamin und Rumänien

Adam Bžoch (Slovak Academy of Sciences): Spuren einer Apparition / auratische Netzwerke – Annäherungsversuche an Benjamin in der Slowakei um und nach der Jahrtausendwende

15.00 ROUNDTABLE | TRANSLATING (IN) THE EAST

Kateryna Mishchenko (Ukraine)

Adam Lipszyc (Poland)

Christian Ferencz-Flatz (Romania)

17.00 CONCLUDING REMARKS

XVI международная конференция «История науки и техники. Музейное дело»

Уважаемые коллеги! Приглашаем вас принять участие в работе XVI Международной научно-практической конференции «История науки и техники. Музейное дело», которую планируется провести в Москве с 14 по 15 декабря 2022 года.

Тема конференции 2022 года: (Ре)конструкция научных практик прошлого и настоящего

Организаторы конференции:

Политехнический музей

Национальный исследовательский университет «Высшая школа экономики»

Исторический факультет МГУ им. М.В. Ломоносова

Институт истории естествознания и техники им. С.И. Вавилова РАН

Ассоциация содействия развитию научно-технических музеев «АМНИТ»

Национальный исследовательский технологический университет «МИСиС»

Мы будем рады видеть в качестве участников конференции историков, социологов, философов, культурологов, антропологов, политологов и музейных специалистов, в фокусе профессиональных интересов которых находится история науки, технологий и техники в России со второй половины XIX века по сегодняшний день. В этом году мы предлагаем обсудить, как происходят научные открытия. Что может дать изучение экономических аспектов профессиональной и частной жизни научных семей? Как запросы общества влияли на инженерную мысль? Имеет ли значение презентация достижений для развития науки и образования? Как менялись приемы и технологии репрезентации результатов научных исследований? Как исследовать научные биографии в XXI веке? Что могут дать коллекции научно-технических музеев историческим исследованиям?

Эти и другие вопросы мы предлагаем обсудить в рамках секций конференции, предложенных нашими постоянными и новыми партнерами: исследовательскими группами и центрами из ведущих научно-исследовательских институтов и университетов.

ПРОЕКТЫ СЕКЦИЙ & ПОДАЧА ЗАЯВОК НА УЧАСТИЕ В КОНФЕРЕНЦИИ - https://polymus.ru/ru/museum/professionals/news/conf-22/

3rd international conference Medical Review Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire, 4–9 October 2021

 We would like to invite you to take part in the 3rd international conference Medical Review Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire, which will take place on 4–9 October 2021. This year, due to the pandemic situation, the conference is organized online, with open access to the presentations provided at mp.pl/auschwitz/conference. Next year we hope—and plan—to meet you again at the live event in Kraków.

The aim of the conference is to educate the world’s medical community about the violations of medical ethics during the Second World War, with special focus on the behaviour of physicians and other medical professionals in Nazi medical institutions and concentration camps or other places of imprisonment, and the ethical implications of Nazi medicine for contemporary medical practice and healthcare policy.

The conference is part of the Medical Review Auschwitz project, developed with the aim of sharing with the international community the unique scientific documents published over 31 years (1961–1991) in the medical journal Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim (Medical Review – Auschwitz). Articles from this journal are being successively translated into English and made available at mp.pl/auschwitz.

We hope that this conference will make a significant contribution to further the understanding of the dark history of Nazi medicine in Nazi German concentration camps and help the international community draw a lesson for future generations.

We look forward to meeting you in virtual space in October 2021.

Conference website: https://www.mp.pl/auschwitz/conference/