ESHS Conference, Barcelona 2024 Call for Proposals

The theme of the ESHS 2024 conference will be Science, technology, humanity, and the Earth. Science is one of the primary means by which mankind understands, represents and intervenes in the world. Humanity is facing challenges that can threaten its future and the future of the planet where it lives. As historians of science, we are committed to understand, inter alia, how epidemics, wars, poverty, inequalities, and climate change are connected. We invite the community of European historians of science to look at the object of their historical research with a view to the great challenges that humanity has been facing both nowadays and throughout its history. The aim is to distance the conference from a specific methodological approach, and to establish a dialogue between different historiographies, perspectives, and topics.

We welcome proposals for symposia and standalone papers on all periods, geographic locations, and areas of specialisation, including but not limited to, the following:
  • Ancient texts, new technologies: digital humanities, computational history of science and the craft of the historian
  • Between global histories and microhistories of science
  • Decolonizing the history of science: children, women, racialised groups, minorities, and other invisible actors
  • “We are part of the Earth and the Earth is part of us.” History of science in the age of the Anthropocene
  • Science creating the environment
  • Human beings and other animals
  • Human sciences and subjectivity
  • The changing epistemic limits of science throughout history: astrology, phrenology, pseudoscience, post-truth, and so on
  • Science and technology in war and peace
  • The material, visual, and textual cultures of science
  • Global health and social challenges
  • The co-construction of knowledge: Science, technology, medicine and its publics

General guidelines

The conference is a face-to-face event.

In selecting proposals for the conference, our scientific committee will give preference to to those proposals that address the conference theme in one or more of its different topics.

We particularly encourage proposals that foster gender–equality and diversity, including researchers with various institutional affiliations, at diverse stages of their professional careers, with different geographical origins, and from underrepresented groups.

Participants may chair more than one symposium and speak or comment in one symposium and chair another. They may, however, present a paper or comment in a symposium only once, unless they are plenary lecturers or prize-winners.


Call for Symposia

Prospective symposium organizers are invited to issue an open call for participants through the website of the ESHS http://www.eshs.org/calls-for-symposia-participation/ and to disseminate it in social media (by using the #ESHS2024 official hashtag) and mailing lists related to history of science.

Please note that 90-minute symposia will comprise at least 3 papers, and 120-minute symposia will comprise at most 4 papers (including comments).

The organizer will chair the symposium or may propose a chair, who may not be a speaker in the symposium, as well as a commentator, upon request.

Organizers may propose up to 4 symposia on the same subject by using the same title for the related symposia ordered by number, e.g., “History of Astrology 1” and “History of Astrology 2”.

Symposium applicants should not submit an individual paper proposal unless they have been notified of the rejection of the symposium proposal. The status of the symposium proposal will be announced well before the closure of the call for papers.

Proposals must be uploaded in the section proposals submission of the website of the conference. In the menu proposal submission/my proposals please select the option symposia. The option for uploading symposium proposals will be active between 1 October 2023 and 22 November 2023.


Call for papers.

We invite proposals for standalone papers. Proposals must be uploaded in the section proposals submission of the website of the conference. In the menu proposals submission/my proposals please select the option standalone papers. The option for uploading standalone papers proposals will be active between 23 November 2023 and 19 February 2024.