Call for papers for the International Committee for the History of Technology’s 43rd Annual Meeting in Porto, Portugal, 26-30 July 2016
Call for
papers for the International Committee for the History of Technology’s 43rd Annual Meeting in Porto,
Portugal, 26-30 July 2016
Technology, Innovation, and Sustainability:
Historical and Contemporary Narratives
Deadline for proposals is 25 January 2016
Innovation and sustainability have
become key words of our everyday life, extending from political and economic
discourse to teaching curricula and from the lay public to academia. However,
the use of these terms is often abstract and simplistic, ignoring the density
of their interrelationships in different geographic, historical and
civilizational contexts, and the boomerang character
of today’s world.
The 43rd ICOHTEC
meeting aims at
addressing this complex relationship by encouraging papers that contribute to a
deeper understanding of the multilayer cultural and material built meaning of
innovation and sustainability and on the various roles played by technology in
enabling or preventing such interplay.
The symposium covers all
periods and areas of the globe. We invite submissions of new, original and
unpublished work that offers fresh perspectives for the history of technology
as well as exploring sources and methods.
The main theme embraces the
concepts of technology,
innovation and sustainability as organizing principles, thus
perceiving them as actors in the building of today’s globalized society. The
programme committee suggests the following non-exhaustive sub-themesfor the consideration of
session organisers and contributors of individual papers, and posters:
● Routes of innovation: the changing
relationship between centres and peripheries (north-south; west-east)
● Readdressing technology’s conceptual
topics: from diffusionism to appropriation
● Innovating in imperial settings: western
dominance, indigenous agency and go-betweens
● Rethinking global technology governance:
how to make innovation work for society
● Technology, nature and power: postcolonial
perspectives on innovation
● Food, environment and agriculture:
industrial and cultural approaches to sustainability
● Innovation and sustainability patterns
in Europe and elsewhere
● Identities in
the face of innovations and environmental crises
● Linking the territory; mobility patterns
and environmental choices
● "The Town Mouse and the Country
Mouse": balancing urban and rural territories
● From grey to green: sustainable energy
● Inventing new consumers: innovation,
sustainability and consumption
● The Big Brother syndrome: privacy in
open societies
● The Grey Goo syndrome: risk and ethical
choices in nuclear, biomedical, and nano technologies
● The changing
historiography of innovation
● Sustainable
narratives of crises: articulating disasters and challenges
● Green home in
green city: sustainable architecture and urban planning
● Re-inventing
health in globalized world
● Displaying
the past or teaching the future? In quest for sustainable museum of technology
ICOHTEC welcomes proposals for
individual papers and posters, but preference will be given to organised
sessions of three or more papers. The Programme Committee will also consider
submissions not directly related to the symposium theme providing that they
relate to the history of technology broadly defined. All proposals must be in
English, and should be submitted electronically by 25 January 2016 via our
website www.icohtec.org/annual-
In addition to the
scientific programme, the symposium will include plenary sessions, business
meetings, special sessions for the prize winning book and article, the general
assembly of ICOHTEC as well as social events such as excursions, receptions,
and a banquet.
If you have any questions
related to the scientific programme, paper, poster or session proposals,
please, do not hesitate to contact Sławomir Łotysz, the chair of the programme
committee, at s.lotysz@gmail.com.
Programme Committee:
Inês Amorim, CITCEM, University of
Porto, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Porto, Portugal
Eike-Christian Heine, Stuttgart
University, Department of History, Section for the History of the Impact of
Technology, Stuttgart, Germany
Peter Koval, Cluster of Excellence Image
Knowledge Gestaltung, Humboldt University, Berlin, Slovakia/Germany
Dick van Lente, Erasmus Universiteit,
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Sławomir Łotysz (chair), Insitute for
the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
M. Luísa Sousa, CIUHCT, Universidade
NOVA de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
James
Stark, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom