Knowledge Notes

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

New Master’s Course

ETH Zürich: MA in History and Philosophy of Knowledge. The specialized two-year Master’s course in History and Philosophy of Knowledge gives students a well-founded understanding of the natural sciences and technical sciences. They are given the analytical tools to critically review the premises and effects of these scientific disciplines. Also, the course enables them to comment on the conditions of academic work. Students also learn to make scientific results and their societal impacts accessible to a broader audience. 

Grants

Dubnow Institute Visiting Research Fellowship Program 2025/26 (Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow, Leipzig). Deadline: 16 December 2024. Simon Dubnow (DI) offers fellowships to external researchers for a visit in Leipzig during the academic year 2025/26. The fellowship’s duration is two months and is aimed at doctoral and postdoctoral researchers (up to six months after their PhD) working on methodologically and thematically innovative projects in Jewish history and culture. 

Conferences / Calls for Papers

Matters of Knowledge. Paradigms and Practices of Conservation through the Centuries. Deadline: 31 October 2024. As part of the SNSF project “Libraries and Museums in Switzerland,” a two-day conference will be held on June 5 and 6, 2025, focusing on different dimensions of the conservation of important collections since their founding. This event will bring together academic, scientific, and professional circles,while providing an opportunity for theoretical reflection and case studies.

On an Intellectual History of Legal History: Figures, Disciplines, Methods, and Moments of the Creation and Institutionalisation of Legal History in 1500-1900 Europe,” Deadline: 1 November 2024. The conference will take place from12-13 June 2025, at the University of Bayreuth, Humboldt Centre of International Excellence. The conference aims to gather scholars working on legal history or other aspects related to the teaching of legal disciplines in a historical context in order to contribute to an intellectual history of this discipline. https://frankejbypoulsen.net/

The Campus and Beyond: Higher Education and Social Inequalities in Europe and North America, 1850s–2000s. Deadline: 8 December 2024. This conference, which will take place from October 9-10, 2025, in Washington, D.C., aims to bring scholars of European and North American higher education together to consider three main themes: access, on-campus inequities, and the social consequences of higher education’s dramatic expansion. The conference presupposes that higher education and its impact on Western societies has changed dramatically since the late nineteenth century.

Rooms – Knowledge – Power: Library Culture in Upper Swabia in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. Deadline: 15 January 2025. In the early modern period, magnificently decorated library halls reflected the power, erudition and wealth of the monasteries. The planned conference aims to take a closer look at Upper Swabian monastery libraries and their (supra-)regional networks. The aim is to encourage cross-order studies that also take up new methodological research approaches from different disciplines. The conference will take place from 08-10 October, 2025, in Ulm, Germany.

Universities and the Public Good: Research, Education, and Democracy since 1945. Deadline: 19 January 2025. The conference, which is kindly funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and will take place from September 10-12, 2025, in Hanover, Germany, addresses two groups: Scholars are invited to submit paper proposals for a general workshop and emerging scholars (doctoral students) are invited to submit proposals to receive feedback on their projects by senior scholars in a special Young Scholars Forum. To better understand higher education’s role in the current international political climate, the proposed conference provides an opportunity to reflect on the history of colleges and universities in North America and Europe since 1945.

Aviation Research and Industry under National Socialism. Deadline: 15 February 2025. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) invites you to submit abstracts for the conference “Luftfahrtforschung und Industrie im Nationalsozialismus,” which will take place on October 8 and 9, 2025, in Göttingen, Germany. The focus will be on forms of cooperation but also competition between research and industry in aviation between 1933 and 1945.

Colloquia

Colloquium of the Interdisciplinary Center for Science and Technology Studies (IZWT). In the current winter semester 2024/25, the IZWT colloquium will once again take place every Wednesday at 4:30 pm (CET), starting 16 October 2024, with lectures on various topics from different subject areas. Attendance is also possible online, via Zoom.

Colloquium on the History of Science in the Early Modern Period, of the Interdisciplinary Center for Science and Technology Studies (IZWT). This winter semester, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Science and Technology Studies (IZWT) at the University of Wuppertal, Germany, is organizing a colloquium on the history of science in the early modern period. The colloquium will take place in person only between 19 November 2024 and 14 January 2025.

Lecture Series

History of Science Seminars at the Leopoldina Center for Science Studies. The seminar series at the Leopoldina – Center for Science Research, in Halle (Saale), Germany, offers a monthly forum for the presentation of current or established research in the context of the history of science, starting 5 November 2024. Attendance is possible online, via Zoom.

Models and Museums: Perspectives from the History of Science and Technology. Public lecture series of the Research Institute for the History of Technology and Science of the Deutsches Museum, in Munich, Germany, starting 21 October 2024. Attendance is possible online, via Zoom.

Jobs

1 Research Coordinator “Wissenschaftskommunikation und -management” (MPIWG, Berlin). Deadline:  03 November .2024. The Max-Planck-Institute for History of Science, in Berlin-Dahlem, Germany, is searching for a research coordinator as parental leave replacement, full time, for about 16 months, starting January 2025.

Postdoc position “Women experts and feminist knowledge production in post-war East Central Europe (1945–1989)” (Prague). Deadline: 11 November 2024. The three-year project is funded by GAČR, the Czech Science Foundation, under the WEAVE grant scheme. The Institute of History of the CAS announces a selection procedure for a post-doc position within the research project entitled “Women experts and feminist knowledge production in post-war East Central Europe (1945–1989),” under the supervision of Dr. Annina Gagyiova (Institute of History, Czech Academy of Sciences), in collaboration with Dr. Hab. Natalia Jarska (Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences).

0,75 Predoc “Wissenschaftsgeschichte” (Univ. Vienna). Deadline: 15 November 2024. The department of History of Science, at the University of Vienna, is searching for a Predoc, who will support the work of the department in research, teaching, and administrative tasks. Furthermore, the Predoc shall research and begin a dissertation project within the first 18 months.

Articles / Reports

History and Theory 63 (2024), 3. Newest issue with some history-of-knowledge-relevant articles.

ConferenceReport: Expertise in the Human Sciences during the 20th Century in Europe and Beyond, by Pavel Petric. Published 3 September 2024.

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This list was compiled by current intern Robin Toelen at the German Historical Institute Washington. The featured image is Jan van der Straets “Lapis Polaris Magnes” from about 1590,  available through Wikimedia Commons with the object number: RP-P-1904-1029.

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