PhD and Postdoc position in Max Planck Research Group "Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions"
PhD and Postdoc position for the Max Planck Research Group “Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions”
For the new 5-year Max Planck Research Group "Visualizing Science in
Media Revolutions", led by Dr. Sietske Fransen, the Bibliotheca
Hertziana - Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome (Italy) seeks
to appoint:
- one postdoctoral researcher (2-year appointment), and
- one pre-doctoral researcher (1-year appointment)
The deadline for both positions is 1 April 2019. Interviews will be
held in Rome on 6-7 May 2019. Both positions are to start 1 September
2019, or as soon as possible after.
The research group will explore the modes and media in which early
modern scientific practitioners visualized their ideas and illustrated
their objects of inquiry. New media (as a result of the printing press),
new tools of observing the world (such as telescopes
and microscopes) and new processes of subsequently recording and
transmitting these observations (such as the more extensive use of
person-al notebooks, and printed images for wider audiences) generated a
new visual culture of early modern science. By comparing
its different forms in areas such as medicine, architecture, astronomy,
and mathematics, we will look at the impact of new media on the way in
which science was communicated visually. Building on previous research
on epistemic images, the group's focus will
be directed at questions such as:
• How did the printing press have a lasting impact on the observational
and visualization skills of early modern scientific practitioners?
• How did scientific practitioners communicate visually for different
audiences, in manuscript (letters, notebooks, hand-written books)
alongside printed books?
• How did early modern scientific practitioners deal with the practical
and moral issues sur-rounding the making and manipulability of images?
Drawing upon expertise in the study of media, visualization, and
science, the Research Group will also devote attention to the current
impact of digital media and digital tools on our current working
practic-es in the humanities and sciences. How are current
innovations in media technology and data storage impacting the role of
images in our own research questions and research methods? Through a
series of small workshops the group will collaborate with researchers in
the humanities, digital humanities, so-cial
sciences, and natural sciences to open up new perspectives on how
issues of new media and new methods of visualizing data pertain to our
time.
For more information about the positions and the application process, please see: