Knowledge Notes

Occasional notes on calls, events, publications, and more that caught our attention. Please email us your own items.

Calls for Papers:

The History of Intellectual Culture (HIC) International Yearbook of Knowledge and Society seeks contributors and/or guest editors for its 2025 volume. Research articles should be around 8,000 words; theoretical contributions, review essays, etc., can be between 4,000 and 8,000 words. If you are interested, please submit a short proposal of 500 words and a CV to HIC@lmu.de by May 1, 2024. Proposals for guest editorship should also include abstracts and CVs for three confirmed contributors.

The CINTER (Courts Images Nobility Territory) research group at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos seeks contributors for its upcoming symposium “Early Modern Private Libraries as Sites of Knowledge Production and Circulation,” to be held on November 7–8, 2024, in Madrid. Deadline April 14, 2024.

The Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge (LUCK) at Lund University is looking for contributors to the eleventh “The Making of the Humanities” conference, which will take place October 9–11, 2024. This year’s conference is entitled “Shifting Cultures of Knowledge in the History of the Humanities.” Contributors are encouraged to examine the history of the humanities in relation to broader, multidisciplinary studies on knowledge and scholarship. Deadline: May 1, 2024.

The Journal for the History of Knowledge welcomes applications for guest editorship for its 2026 special issue (theme to be determined). Proposals are due May 1, 2024.

German speakers may be interested in this year’s early career workshop “Upheavals in Knowledge,” convened by the Historical Institute at RWTH Aachen. Projects on the history of knowledge, particularly those examining “epistemic breaks,” are especially welcome. Deadline: April 15, 2024.

Events:

This August, the University of Antwerp will host a four-day summer school convened by organizers of the research project “Science at the Fair: Performing Knowledge and Technology in Western Europe, 1850–1914,” out of which we posted a blog contribution by Eva Andersen last year: “Traveling Zoos as Knowledge Mediators?” Aimed at Master’s and PhD students, the summer school is entitled “Performing Media Histories.”

A note from the organizers: “Join us on a journey through the linked histories of media and performance. Experiment with old and new technologies and explore the sensory dimensions of media. Engage with leading experts, collaborate with contemporary artists, and become part of a dynamic learning experience, questioning, experimenting, and critically analyzing the role of media in our past and present.”

Early bird and non-EU citizen registration is open until May 15, 2024; EU citizens may register until June 30, 2024.

History of Knowledge Seminar Series at the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge (some will be held online.)

ESHHS: The European Society for the History of the Human Sciences announces the 43rd ESHHS conference to be held at the University of Essex, Colchester Campus, June 25-June 28, 2024. Last minute proposals can be handed in through March 15, 2024.

Short-Term Grants:

The Iron Library: Historians of technology and materials science, particularly those working on the history of metallurgy and mining, may be interested in the library’s researcher-in-residence program. Applications are considered on a rolling basis throughout the year.

The Iron Library, located in the former Clarissan convent Paradies, is an attractive place for focused research and creative writing. The research period may last from two to three weeks, and the precise dates and modalities will be arranged individually with the successful applicants.

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science is interested in proposals connected to the various research groups at the institute. For fellowships starting this autumn, the deadline is May 1, 2024.

Our sister institute, the German Historical Institute Paris, invites applications for stipend programs throughout the year. The institute offers stipends for early-stage research, on-site research in France, as well as support for postdocs who are in the process of securing funds for research (group) projects.

Jobs

The History Department at Heidelberg University is looking for a Doctoral Researcher who will contribute to the ERC-funded research project “FEVER – Global Histories of (a) Disease 1750-1840.” Deadline: April 15, 2024.

The ERC project titled “FEVER – Global Histories of (a) Disease” explores the history of fever and febrile diseases in societies within or tied to the Atlantic world between 1750–1840. The project studies the prevalence and sensory experience of fever(s) in the Atlantic World in that period, controversies about the causes and course of fever and historic febrifuges. The doctoral projects are expected to centre on the history of fever(s) in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science is seeking a postdoctoral researcher to join its “Artifacts, Action, Knowledge” department in the working group “Visualization and Material Cultures of the Heavens in Eurasia and North Africa (1400 BCE–1700 CE).” Deadline: April 7, 2024.

Recent and Upcoming Publications

Johan Östling and David Larsson Heidenblad (both of the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge), The History of Knowledge, Elements in Historical Theory and Practice Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024): an introduction to the history of knowledge that assesses the state of the field and offers new paths for its development Available in open access.

Also available OA from LUCK,

Östling, Johan, David Larsson Heidenblad, and Anna Nilsson Hammar, eds., Knowledge Actors : Revisiting Agency in the History of Knowledge (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2023).

New collaborative volume on the history of the Max Planck Society:

Renn, Jürgen, Carsten Reinhardt, and Jürgen Kocka, eds., Die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft: Wissenschafts- und Zeitgeschichte 1945–2005, Studien zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2024).

A special issue of The Journal for the History of Knowledge, “Entangled Temporalities,” edited by Hansun Hsiung, Laetitia Lenel, and Anna-Maria Meisterthis and released in November 2023, examines the interwoven nature of knowledge and temporal perceptions, stressing the multiplicity and interwoven nature of time in history.

Tom Özden-Schilling, The Ends of Research: Indigenous and Settler Science after the War in the Woods (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2023), examines the history of scientific knowledge in the aftermath of the “War in the Woods,” a period of anti-logging blockades in Canada in the late twentieth century. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Özden-Schilling traces the work of researcher communities in British Columbia and follows the environmental researchers as they struggled to continue their work in the face of insufficient funds, resource extraction, and land conflicts.

Hannah Wills, Sadie Harrison, Erika Jones, Rebecca Martin, and Farrah Lawrence-Mackey, eds., Women in the History of Science: A Sourcebook (London: UCL Press, 2023). Available in open access.

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Thanks are due to Lutz Wahnschaffe for compiling this list. Featured image: Cover of History of Intellectual Culture (HIC) International Yearbook of Knowledge and Society.

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