Calendario eventi
12th European Spring School on History of Science and Popularization
“SCIENCE, HISTORY AND GLOBALIZATION”
Maó, Menorca , 8-10 May 2025
Since the beginning of the century, scholars have increasingly engaged with the global dimension of history. In 2004, Christopher Bayly highlighted the importance of connections between apparently unrelated phenomena and processes in his The Birth of the Modern World. Between the decade of the 1780s and 1914 a host of agents made the world economically, politically, culturally, and socially more homogeneous. The very same year, in 2004, historian of science Jim Secord coined the term “Knowledge in Transit”. Communication and the production of knowledge need to be understood as part of one process.
This Spring School will explore in how far global history and the history of science may benefit from the methods and approaches of the other field. Paying close attention to non-Western contexts of knowledge production is a classic example, revisiting categories such as the “Great Divergence” or “Industrious Revolution” with “new eyes” another. The dialectic between international political crises and “refugee scholars” or the impact of the global animal trade on zoology since 1850, the role played by tropical medicine (broadely-constructed) in the processes of nation-building and empire-building in the Age of Empire, are some more recent examples. Yet clearly, the dialogue between global historians and historians of science has only just begun and much of its potential remains untapped.
This Spring School aims to foster and incentivise this dialogue. We have invited four senior scholars, who work in history of science and/or global history and have made in recent years significant contributions, also on a methodological level, to the historiography.
Zoltán Biedermann (Professor of Early Modern History at University College London) is a historian of early modern global connections with a focus on the Portuguese Empire in Asia. His interests include diplomacy, imperial ideas, cartography, and the politics of space.
Helen Cowie (Professor of Early Modern History at the University of York) works on the cultural history of science with a particular focus on the history of animals. She also researches and teaches the History of Latin America.
Stefanie Gänger (Professor of Modern History at the University of Heidelberg) has explored the histories of collecting, science and medicine in late-colonial and early Republican Spanish America, as well as the wider world.
James Poskett (Associate Professor in the History of Science and Technology at the University of Warwick) has worked on a wide range of topics that have taken him across the world, from astronomical observatories in India to natural history museums in Australia.
At the school these experts will be joined by a group of young scholars who will present their own research. Together we will reflect about the connections between our fields of study. How may we insert our own case studies in the overarching methodological and theoretical discussions? The school will use different formats to facilitate conversation and exchanges: keynote lectures, workshops and posters.
The Spring School “Science, History and Globalization” is addressed at graduate students and early postdoctoral scholars. Applicants are asked to send:
- a CV of no more than one page
- an abstract of the research topic/case study they would like to discuss at the school (as a pre-circulated paper or poster) of no more than one page
Please send your application by 1 December 2024 to
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Registration and grants
The registration fee for the Spring School will be 150 €.
A limited number of grants will be available. After acceptance participants might apply for a grant justifying the need of funding.
Further Schedule
December 1, 2024: Decision on applications
January 31, 2025: Deadline for grants application
February 28, 2025: Decision on grant applications
March 28, 2025: Deadline for registration with discount and first draft programme
April 25, 2025: Deadline for registration and final programme
May 8-10, 2025: Spring School
For previous editions of the Menorca Spring School see
https://schct.iec.cat/activitats-2/escola-de-primavera
We are very much looking forward to your applications!
Scientific Committee
Daniele Cozzoli (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona)
Beatrice Falcucci (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona)
Oliver Hochadel (Milà i Fontanals Institute for Research in Humanities, CSIC, Barcelona)
Agustí Nieto-Galan (Institut d’Història de la Ciència, Universitat Autònoma Barcelona)
Organising institutions
Institut Menorquí d'Estudis (IME), Maó
Societat Catalana d'Història de la Ciència i la Tècnica (SCHCT)
Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), Barcelona
Institut d’Història de la Ciència (iHC), Universitat Autònoma Barcelona (UAB).
Milà i Fontanals Institute for Research in Humanities, CSIC, Barcelona