New project and call for summer school applications:
“Science at the Fair: Performing Knowledge and Technology in Western Europe, 1850-1914,” a 5-year project (2021-2026) funded by the European Research Council that includes a blog, a research seminar series, and a summer school under the broader name: Arts & Media Archaeology.
The EU-funded SciFair project performs pioneering research on the role itinerant show people played in the circulation of information about scientific and technological advances at fairs in western Europe between 1850 and 1914. The project starts from the hypothesis that fairs during this period were not only local folk events but also centres of international exchange. The SciFair team analyses practices of science performance across national frontiers and maps transnational networks in western Europe.
The deadline to apply to the Summer School “Arts & Media Archaeology — Performing Science, Mediating Knowledge” is coming up soon. Early bird deadline: May 1, 2023; regular deadline: July 1, 2023. Focusing on the connection between performance and media culture and the history of science, knowledge, and ideas, the summer school will take place from 4-8 September 2023 at the University of Antwerp.
Current events:
Happening now! “Colonial Knowledge in a Decolonial Age,” workshop convened by Alexandra Przyrembel of the FernUniversität in Hagen and Jakob Vogel of the Centre Marc Bloch, from 19-21 April 2023 in Berlin.
Calls for papers:
Workshop: “Shaping the Periphery, Enabling Movement – Infrastructure in the Caucasus from the Early 19th Century to the Late Soviet Period” in Yerevan, Armenia, 2-6 October, 2023. Deadline: May 1, 2023.
Conference: 45th Annual Conference of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-speaking countries: “Borders – Migration – Mobility” in Grainau, Germany, from 16-18 February, 2024. Deadline: May 15, 2023.
Conference reports:
For H-Soz-Kult by Annika Eillen de Freitas of the Institut für Geschichte at the University of Oldenburg: “Mariner Letters, 1600-1800,” organized by the Prize Papers Project and Marine Lives Project, Lucas Haasis and Colin Greenstreet, at the University of Oldenburg from 14-15 July, 2022. These mariner letters reveal how mariners shared their knowledge from their travels, turning the world “into a small village – even in the early modern period.”
For H-Soz-Kult by Lucija Bakšić of the Graduate School Global Intellectual History, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Franz L. Fillafer of the Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna: “Empire of Circulation: Habsburg Knowledge in Its Global Settings,” convened by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, the Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council, and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, in Vienna, Austria, from 3-6 October, 2022.
Book review:
By Elisabeth Heijmans of the University of Antwerp on Lucas Haasis, The Power of Persuasion: Becoming a Merchant in the 18th Century (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2022). Based on over 2,200 letters of the Hamburg merchant Luetkens during his stay in France, the book presents practices and materiality in merchant communities of the eighteenth century.
Featured image: Picture of a fair featuring science topics from the “Science at the Fair” project website, scifair.eu.
