Käte Hamburger Research Centre „global dis:connect“; Karen Oslund (Towson Univ.) and Lachlan Fleetwood (LMU Munich) (Web)

Time: 25.-26.02.2027
Venue: Munich
Proposals by: 15.10.2026

In recent years, the history of science and adjacent fields have shifted from a focus on individual scientists and formal scientific societies to considering larger communities of practice as instrumental in making knowledge. At the same time, we have moved away from histories of individual scientific disciplines – such as physics, chemistry, and biology – to examinations of knowledge formation, construction and the co-mingling of different types of practices. As our understanding of science has moved into the field from the salon and laboratory, and as these fields have become increasingly varied and global, more and more individuals, objects, animals and plants, have been enrolled in the practice of making science. This workshop seeks to make visible ‚the knowledge and skills of the people who had collected specimens for their masters or for the market … and the local meanings of objects wrenched from one context and reassigned to another‘.
In particular, the workshop will focus on the role of labour in making knowledge and scientific practice. This includes the labour of people who did not see themselves as ’scientists‘ or ’natural historians‘, such as sailors who collected natural-history specimens, artists who sketched plants and animals, and Indigenous peoples who, among other things, enabled scientific expeditions to survive in unfamiliar environments, operate their instruments and trace changes of climate. Additionally, we will consider papers examining the work of artists and artisans in both shaping and disseminating this knowledge. In so doing, we will address in conversations throughout the workshop methodological issues that present themselves with this expansion in the global reach of science and the corresponding expansion of the nature of scientific practice. Read more and source … (Web)