CfP: Peste y pestilencias. Perspectivas transdisciplinarias y diacrónicas de la historia de la peste

La Asociación de Demografía Histórica, organiza conjuntamente con la red IN-HOPPE -International Network -Historical and osteoarchaeological Past Populations Exploration-, y el Grupo de Investigación de Historia de la Salud de la Universitat de les Illes Balears, un coloquio internacional, transdisciplinario y diacrónico sobre la historia de la peste desde la perspectiva de los avances recientes en historia, arqueología, epidemiología y biología molecular.

La peste es una infección, a menudo irreversible, debida a la bacteria Yersinia pestis. Esta bacteria afecta a las poblaciones humanas y sus episodios a veces muy violentos han generado uno de los más temidos azotes en la Historia. En una acepción más amplia “peste” también señala toda forma de enfermedad contagiosa y altamente letal. En las fuentes medievales y modernas los términos “peste”, “pestilencia”, “contagio”, equivalen a epidemias, aunque estas no son necesariamente atribuibles a peste.

Es por ello que os invitamos a enviar propuestas sobre las siguientes temáticas:

1. El estudio de los huéspedes de la peste y las condiciones medioambientales del período.
2. Las características epidemiológicas de Yersinia pestis y sus formas de transmisión, frente a otras epidemias con las que puede confundirse, y determinar las enfermedades que históricamente se han englobado en el concepto de peste o pestilencia.

CfP: Materials and Time: An Anthology

Scholars from a wide spectrum of research fields are exploring the temporalities of materials, each from their own disciplinary perspective. 

We invite texts of no more than 1000 words discussing the topic of ‘Materials and Time’ for a forthcoming transdisciplinary publication and workshop. How authors wish to interpret this topic is left open, but they should focus on a single material, however construed. We welcome contributions from any discipline. Aspects of time to consider might include: 

• lifetimes, lifecycles, use, trajectories, persistence, endurance, ageing 
• depletion, peak, criticality, erosion, alteration, degradation, conservation 
• re-use, remaining, recycling, returns, inheritances 
• birthdays and anniversaries, death, decline, rebirth
• genealogies, time travel
• ephemerality, regimes of temporality,mimetism 
• ages, epochs
• chronomarkers, signatures, records and measurements 

Selected texts will be included in an anthology publication on this broad topic and their authors may be invited to a one-day workshop to be held in 2021. The workshop will contribute to the development of an interdisciplinary network on materials.

The deadline for submitting texts is April 30, 2020. Texts should be submitted at the following web address:

https://materialbiographies.typeform.com/to/kqrGV7

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: New Mechanism, Reduction and Emergence in Physics, Chemistry and Biology | University of Lisbon, 15-16 September 2020

New Mechanism, Reduction and Emergence in Physics, Chemistry and Biology

 

University of Lisbon, 15-16 September 2020

 

Deadline for submissions: 31th May 2020

 

Invited Speakers

 

Bill Bechtel, UC San Diego

Brigitte Falkenburg, Technische Universität Dortmund

Robin Hendry, Durhan University

Phyllis Illari, UCL

Alvaro Moreno, IAS-Research

 

Conference theme and call for abstracts

 

This conference addresses the epistemological and ontological significance as well as the scope of new mechanism and, in particular, its relationship with the topics of reduction and emergence in the physical, chemical and biological sciences. As it is well known, new mechanism was elaborated to overcome the limits of the neo-positivist philosophy of science and, in particular, the nomological model of scientific explanation. Still, it is also true that new mechanism is supposed to be new vis-à-vis the classical atomistic mechanism from the XVII century. Being so, what should we take to be the real novelty of the so-called new mechanism? What may be the ontological reasons underlying the adoption of mechanistic instead of other modelling strategies (e.g., network analysis)? Furthermore, does new mechanism fit the phenomena studied by contemporary sciences? For example, how can mechanistic explanations fit contemporary physics, for instance quantum field theory, astroparticle physics or condensed matter physics? Additionally, what can be the new mechanistic position on the ongoing debate about the different notions of reduction and emergence, either in ontological or epistemological terms? How can the new mechanistic model of explanation be compatible with a certain notion of reduction and still accommodate a non-trivial notion of emergence? Are mechanistic explanations necessarily reductive, given that many involve intertheoretical identities? Finally, in what sense emergence and reduction can be taken as direct opposite and/or complementary views within the new mechanistic approach? The main goal of this conference is to address such questions by taking into account contemporary research developments in the natural sciences.

 

CfP: Pregnancy, Poverty and Health Workshop

The Centre for the History of Health and Healthcare (CSHHH) Glasgow, is organizing a workshop around the theme 'Pregnancy, Poverty and Health' in July 2020. Please find attached a call for papers.

We warmly in invite researchers and academics from the social sciences and health humanities submit abstracts, but we would also like to invite practitioners working in low income communities to contribute. As 2020 is the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife, related papers would be particularly welcome.

Women living in poverty have always suffered greater health risks during pregnancy than their wealthier counterparts. Even in western countries where vast amounts of money are spent on healthcare, birth outcomes tend to be poorer in low-income communities than in wealthier neighbourhoods. Poor women are also less likely (or less able) to fully engage with the available healthcare. Yet despite these longstanding challenges, we understand little about women’s pregnancy experiences while living on low incomes.

While in recent years, scholars and practitioners across a range of disciplines have increasingly investigated health inequalities and considered how best to address them, pregnancy has attracted limited attention from the medical humanities. Funded by the Wellcome Trust, this Pregnancy, Poverty and Health Workshop will facilitate interdisciplinary discussions by inviting a range of research into the relationships between pregnancy, poverty and health. We welcome proposals for papers which address any aspect of such relationships, but may include:

•Patient-practitioner relationships
•Health and welfare initiatives and advocacy for change
•Health education
•Issues of race, ethnicity or maternal age
•Place specific factors (urban/rural, climate, culture)
•Experiences of pregnancy on low-incomes (prenatal, childbirth and postnatal)
•Pregnancy and mental health
•Religious, cultural or social influences on maternal behavior
•Complex pregnancies and medical technologies
•Household economics

Paper proposals should include a 200-250 word abstract and a brief 100-150 word biography with contact information by 2 April, 2020.  This workshop is supported by the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare (CSHHH Glasgow), the Wellcome Trust and Glasgow Caledonian University.

Call for proposals: Technologies of Disability workshop, London 2-3 June 2020

Born within a decade of each other, pioneering art historian Aby Warburg and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Sir Henry Wellcome had bold visions for the material and visual study of culture and science. While Warburg was exploring alternatives to stylistic accounts of art through his “laboratory” of a growing library and photo archive, Wellcome was amassing one of the most diverse collections devoted to the history of health. Today, their research communities continue to care for these legacies with a critical eye to their conceptual premises and contested histories. 

 

This two-day workshop juxtaposes Warburg’s anthropological thought and his theories on tools or devices (Gerät) developed against the backdrop of the First World War, with Wellcome’s simultaneous collecting of medieval and early modern technologies of disability. Ranging from surgical tools to clappers owned by sufferers of leprosy, from materia medica manuscripts to experiments in metal prosthesis, Wellcome conceived of these objects as part of a “universal” history of the human being. We are interested in the roles played by such items in framing disabled persons in the past, as well as their use in recovering marginalized histories for the present. Through considering instruments of medical practice, visual means of social exclusion, and technologies of mobility, we hope to challenge conventional accounts of the history of science and art. Workshop participants are encouraged to explore the intellectual potential alongside the affective and inclusive concerns of the material histories of disability. By engaging hands-on with collection and archive materials, we will ask among other questions: Who had the knowledge to produce instruments or tools of disability? How much did makers, health practitioners, and users collaborate in devising them? How practical were these technologies? Whose aesthetic sensibilities did they serve? In what ways did these objects participate in the cultural construction of disability? What are the ethical stakes of terminology in histories of art and science, as well as in our archiving of historical disability? In what ways are our inquiries today shaped by Warburg and Wellcome's turn of the century scholarly enterprises?

 

Participants are invited to join research staff, fellows, and faculty for two days devoted to Wellcome’s rich collections and the Warburg’s intellectual resources in premodern European culture. Due to work with original objects, space is limited. We are seeking researchers from across the arts, humanities, and social sciences to join programmed speakers. PhD students, postdocs, and other early career scholars are especially encouraged to apply. Please send a 300 word proposal outlining the relevance of the workshop to your research and your motivations for attending along with any accessibility needs and a CV to Jess Bailey by 03 April 2020. The workshop is generously supported by Wellcome Collection and the Warburg Institute. It is organized by Jess Bailey (Wellcome Trust, University of California at Berkeley) and Felix Jäger (Bilderfahrzeuge, The Warburg Institute, London.)

Postdoc and Two PhD Positions at Maastricht University: Oil Industry, Resource Scarcity, and Alternative Energy in the Long 1970s

The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University is hiring two PhDs and one postdoc (four-year appointments) for an NWO-funded project on the history of the oil industry, resource scarcity, and alternative energy in the long 1970s. One PhD will look at the oil industry’s involvement with nuclear energy, the other solar energy. The postdoc will focus on resource scarcity forecasting techniques and oil actors’ participation in global debates about resource scarcity and environmentalism. Ads for the positions are available here:

https://www.academictransfer.com/nl/290458/postdoctoral-researcher-managing-scarcity-at-the-faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences-history-department-maastricht-university-1-fte-48-months/

https://www.academictransfer.com/nl/290460/phd-candidate-managing-scarcity-at-the-faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences-department-of-history-maastricht-university-10fte-4-years/

For more information about these positions or the project of which they are a part, please contact Cyrus Mody

Exposició "La darrera pesta d'Europa"

Amb motiu de "1820, l'Any de la Pesta" tindrà lloc l'exposició "La darrera pesta d'Europa: La pesta de 1820 al Llevant de Mallorca".

Aquesta exposició s'exhibirà en els municipis afectats, altres poblacions i diversos centres sanitaris i educatius al llarg de l'any 2020.

Submission Deadline 20 March 2020

Mathematical Cultures & Practices XI

St Andrews, Scotland, 8-10 July 2020, Satellite Meeting of the BSHM-CSHPM/SCHPM meeting "People, Places, Practices" https://www.math.uni-hamburg.de/spag/ml/MathCultPracXI/


KEYNOTE SPEAKERS.

   David Abrahams, Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, England.

   Jessica Bradford, Science Museum Group, London, England.

   Nina Engelhardt, University of Stuttgart, Germany.

   Christian Greiffenhagen, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong,
   China.

   Matthew Inglis, Loughborough University, England.

   Alice Jenkins, University of Glasgow, Scotland.

   Mikkel Willum Johansen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

   Norbert Schappacher, Institut de Recherche Mathematique Avancee,
   Strasbourg, France.

This meeting stands in the tradition of an informal series of meetings of scholars interested in cultural aspects of mathematical research practice, attracting a community of scholars from mathematics, philosophy, mathematics education, sociology, anthropology, automated reasoning, and history of mathematics. Participants of these gatherings were interested in developing a view of mathematics on the basis of empirical observations of the practices of mathematicians, taking into account the fact that cultures and practices of mathematics vary over time, space, and research community.

We should like to invite all researchers working in the study of cultures and practices of mathematics to contribute their presentations to the next conference of the informal series, held in St Andrews, Scotland, from 8 to 10 July 2020 as a satellite event of the BSHM-CSHPM/SCHPM meeting in St Andrews.

Please submit short abstracts (100-250 words) on questions including, but not limited to, the following topics:

BSHM Undergraduate Essay Prize

As every year, so this year too the BSHM is happy to announce a call for submissions for its Undergraduate Essay Prize. Please share widely with your students. 

The essay may be on any topic within the history of mathematics and should be no more than 2500 words in length (excluding references). The competition is open to any person who is enrolled as an undergraduate in a UK or Irish university during the academic year 2019-2020.

The value of the prize will be £100, plus free membership of the Society for three years.

Details about how to enter can be found on the Society website.

The deadline for receipt of submissions is the 1^st July 2020.

https://www.bshm.ac.uk/undergraduate-essay-prize

Two predoctoral fellowships in Research Group Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions, Bibliotheca Hertziana - Max Planck Institute for Art History

The Max Planck Research Group, based at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, has been formed to examine how scientific practitioners visualize their ideas, illustrate their working methods and communicate their observations, with a specific focus on the early modern period. We are especially interested in the impact that new media have on processes of visualization and whether or not changes in these processes reflect new ways of thinking. A new visual culture emerged in the early modern period by those in pursuit of knowledge due to a variety of reasons. These included: new media (as a result of the printing press); new instruments for observing the world (such as telescopes and microscopes); and new ways of thinking about nature and the world. By comparing media, tools, and modes of communication in different fields of early modern science, such as medicine, architecture, astronomy, and mathematics, the members of this research group will investigate the impact of new media on the visual communication of science. As a group of historians with expertise in the study of media, visualization, and (the history of) science, the Research Group also investigates the impact of current new digital media and tools on (our own) working practices in the humanities and sciences. The group uses a wide variety of research methods and, in doing so, draws upon visual culture, art history, media studies, history of the book, cultural anthropology, and history of science and medicine.
More information on the research group can be found here: https://www.biblhertz.it/de/research-groups/visualizing-science. 

Applications from candidates in every field within the history of science, medicine and technology, history of art, digital humanities, media studies, and medieval/early modern history are welcome, with preference given to projects spanning traditional disciplinary boundaries. The working language of the Research Group is English. The positions may start in June or September 2020. 
We are looking for one candidate who is working on the medieval/early modern period, and one candidate working on how digital technologies have impacted recent and contemporary scientific research.