Narrative science in techno-environments: integrating history of science with environmental history and humanities
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Sponsored by The British Academy.
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In partnership with the British Society for History of Science and the British Society for Literature and Science.
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Credit for images in the workshop banner
Japanese Knotweed - KENPEI [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fallopia_japonica1.jpg
Plate depicting the Earth's crust, The Bridgewater Treatises (1833-1836)
http://geology.19thcenturyscience.org/
Portrait of Luther Burbank [Shaw Photography [Public domain]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burbank_Shaw_c1902.jpg
Gene drive - (Wyss Institute)
https://wyss.harvard.edu/technology/gene-drives/
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fallopia_japonica1.jpg
Plate depicting the Earth's crust, The Bridgewater Treatises (1833-1836)
http://geology.19thcenturyscience.org/
Portrait of Luther Burbank [Shaw Photography [Public domain]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burbank_Shaw_c1902.jpg
Gene drive - (Wyss Institute)
https://wyss.harvard.edu/technology/gene-drives/
This two-day interdisciplinary workshop is made possible thanks to the generous support of the British Academy (grant number BARSEA19\190021). It expands on the work of the Narrative Science project, a European Research Council funded project based at the London School of Economics (grant agreement No. 694732). It will take place in London on the 18th-19th of July.
This workshop, and our wider networking activities, capitalise on two overlapping and interrelated research agendas in the history of science and environmental history. First, narrative, be it as a set of epistemic tools, rules for laying out information, or a distinctive way of knowing, provides some of the most important ways in which scientists gain knowledge of the world. The workshop therefore takes the narrative science project into cases where environments and environmental relations have been the subject of scientific and technological investigation and intervention. Second, and in parallel, the past two decades have seen the rapid rise of the environmental humanities, a key feature of which has been explicit integration of historical and literary research. Literary and philosophical analyses of narrative (what it is, how it works, etc.) provide important materials that can inspire new directions in historical research. The workshop's shared focus is accordingly on narrative, science, and environmental history. To these ends we are proud to have partnered with both the British Society for the History of Science and the British Society for Literature and Science. We have already gathered a range of expert speakers, who you can find listed below alongside the titles of their talks.
Given that the overall aim is not merely to produce a workshop, but rather to create a platform and a network for research at the intersections of the history of science and technology, literary studies, and the environmental humanities, we are pleased to announce that this event is organised in collaboration with 'Environment, Climate, and Heredity: the integration of environmental humanities with the history of heredity' to take place on the following Saturday, 20th of July, at Oxford, organised by Dr John Lidwell-Durnin. Further details: https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/event/environment-climate-and-heredity-the-integration-of-environmental-humanities-with-the-history
This workshop, and our wider networking activities, capitalise on two overlapping and interrelated research agendas in the history of science and environmental history. First, narrative, be it as a set of epistemic tools, rules for laying out information, or a distinctive way of knowing, provides some of the most important ways in which scientists gain knowledge of the world. The workshop therefore takes the narrative science project into cases where environments and environmental relations have been the subject of scientific and technological investigation and intervention. Second, and in parallel, the past two decades have seen the rapid rise of the environmental humanities, a key feature of which has been explicit integration of historical and literary research. Literary and philosophical analyses of narrative (what it is, how it works, etc.) provide important materials that can inspire new directions in historical research. The workshop's shared focus is accordingly on narrative, science, and environmental history. To these ends we are proud to have partnered with both the British Society for the History of Science and the British Society for Literature and Science. We have already gathered a range of expert speakers, who you can find listed below alongside the titles of their talks.
Given that the overall aim is not merely to produce a workshop, but rather to create a platform and a network for research at the intersections of the history of science and technology, literary studies, and the environmental humanities, we are pleased to announce that this event is organised in collaboration with 'Environment, Climate, and Heredity: the integration of environmental humanities with the history of heredity' to take place on the following Saturday, 20th of July, at Oxford, organised by Dr John Lidwell-Durnin. Further details: https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/event/environment-climate-and-heredity-the-integration-of-environmental-humanities-with-the-history
programme 18th july
SESSION 1 (10:30-12:00)
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Dominic J. Berry (LSE)
Introduction: Narrative science in techno-environments Dominic is a historian and philosopher of science whose research integrates historical, philosophical, and social scientific methods and approaches, with a particular emphasis on the history of biology from the late nineteenth century to the present. He is Research Fellow on the Narrative Science project. |
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Ina Linge (University of Exeter)
Narrating Human-animal Sexual Nature around 1920: Richard Goldschmidt, Magnus Hirschfeld and Hanns Heinz Ewers Dr Ina Linge is Associate Research Fellow in the College of Humanities and the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter. She is currently working on two research projects: her first monograph Narrating Queer Livability: German Sexology, Psychoanalysis, and the Writing of the Self, to be published with the University of Michigan Press; and a second project called ‘The Politics of Sexual Nature: Sexology, Animals and the Arts (1862-1935)’. Dr Linge holds a PhD (Modern Languages) and MPhil (Gender Studies) from the University of Cambridge and her work has been funded by the AHRC, the MHRA, and the Wellcome Trust. |
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Jean-Baptiste Gouyon (UCL)
Wildlife conservation as a cinematic project? Jean-Baptiste Gouyon is a lecturer in Science communication at the UCL department of science and technology studies. Trained as a biologist, historian and sociologist of science, his research is in the history of the presentation of science in visual media. He’s published on displays at the Science Museum, on the history of British science television, and on the history of wildlife television in Britain. |
Tea/coffee break (12:00-12:30)
ECR QUICK-FIRE (12:30-13:15)
lunch (13:15-14:30)
session 2 (14:30-16:00)
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Greg Lynall (University of Liverpool)
Reading Renewables: Stories of Solar Power Greg Lynall is Reader in English, and co-director of the Literature & Science Hub at the University of Liverpool. His publications include Swift and Science (2012). The monograph Imagining Solar Energy: The Power of the Sun in Literature, Science and Culture is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic. |
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John Lidwell-Durnin (University of Oxford)
“Have they remained what they were in Europe?”: narrative, organisms, and environment in explorations of South America John is a departmental lecturer at the Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at Oxford University. His primary research interests are debates over heredity and population in the nineteenth century. |
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Harriet Ritvo (MIT)
The Stakes of Species Harriet Ritvo is Arthur J. Conner Professor of History at MIT, and teaches courses in British history, environmental history, the history of human-animal relations, and the history of natural history. Her current research concerns wildness and domestication. |
TEA/COFFEE BREAK (16:00-16:30)
ecr quick-fire (16:30-17:15)
poster reception (17:30-19:30)
PROGRAMME 19TH JULY
ecr quick-fire (10:00-11:00)
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Mauricio Nicolas Vergara
(Università della Svizzera italiana/University of Göttingen) 
Avalanches WAR |
TEA/COFFEE BREAK (11:00-11:30)
session 3 (11:30-13:00)
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Charlotte Sleigh (University of Kent)
Sugar in the air: carbon narratives, futures and endings Charlotte Sleigh is Professor of Science Humanities at the University of Kent. She has written a number of books in the history of natural history, history of science, and science and literature – and is slowly working her way towards a book on sf fandom in interwar Britain. She is currently editor of the British Journal for the History of Science. |
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Animesh Chatterjee (Leeds Trinity University)
Urban, political and cultural environments in late-19th century Bengali anticolonial representations of electricity Animesh Chatterjee is a final-year PhD candidate at Leeds Trinity University. His thesis, titled “Conflict and Identity in the Social Life of Electricity in Colonial Calcutta, c.1880-1925”, studies the multiple and multifaceted political and cultural meanings of electricity, and electrical technologies such as lighting and fans, in colonial Calcutta. The thesis invests in an exploration of social actors and archival sources hitherto unacknowledged in histories of technologies in colonial India to situate electricity within the class and nationalist politics of the Bengali middle-class gentlemanly or bhadralok (gentlefolk) society and its complex relations with British colonialism. |
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sam smiley (Astrodime Transit Authority)
Ornamentalism: The Migrations and Translations of Japanese Knotweed sam smiley is a media artist, educator and nonbinary human. They live and work at the intersection of STS, Arts-Based Qualitative Research and video. They are affiliated with AstroDime Transit Authority, a media collective of independent scholars and artists. |
lunch (13:00-14:00)
ecr quick-fire (14:00-14:45)
Tea/coffee break (14:45-15:00)
session 4 (15:00-16:30)
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Jon Agar (UCL)
"British Nature was Lost Here, 1964-71": what's at stake when scientists, nature writers and bureaucrats tell stories Jon Agar is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at University College London. He is a historian of recent science and technology, and is the author of Science in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Polity 2012) and Constant Touch: a Global History of the Mobile Phone (Icon, 2nd edition 2013). |
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Anahita Rouyan (Independent scholar and consultant)
Producing Mutations: Scientific Plant Breeding and Narratives of Nature in the Progressive-Era United States, 1900-1914 Dr. Anahita Rouyan received her doctorate from the University of Bologna in Science, Cognition, and Technology (2017). Drawing on her background in literary and cultural studies, her work investigates the circulation of scientific concepts in the American and British print media. She is currently working on a monograph on the representations of scientific plant breeding in the United States, 19th-20th c. |
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Alex Hall (University of Birmingham)
Who speaks for the flood? Exploring agency, expectations and the supernatural in extreme weather events Dr Alexander Hall is a historian of science and environmental historian whose work explores various aspects of science in society, exploring themes including science and belief in society, media communication of science, and environmental narratives. He is a research fellow on the multidisciplinary project, Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum at the University of Birmingham, Recorder for the History of Science Section at the British Science Association, and President of the International Commission for the History of Meteorology. He can be found on Twitter @Green_gambit |
wrapping up (16:30-17:00)
programme 20th july
Many members of the group will then be moving over to Oxford for 'Environment, Climate, and Heredity: the integration of environmental humanities with the history of heredity' organised by John Lidwell-Durnin.
