Connecting Switzerland based early career scholars in the History of Science
HSSuisse 2021 took place on June 7, 2021, on Zoom. It was organized by Stephan Graf, Lukas Held and Niki Rhyner and hosted by Michael Hagner's Chair for Science Studies. In three live panels, we discussed the presentations that had been watched by the participants in advance.
Don't hesitate to contact us in case of questions: stepmartahan.graf@wiss.gess.ecarlitathz.ch
Program
10:45 Welcome (Michael Hagner) and Introduction (Stephan Graf, Lukas Held, Niki Rhyner)
11:00–12:00 Panel discussion 1
11:00–11:30 Session 1: Humans, Cultures, Populations (chair: Lukas Held, UZH)
Jakob Odenwald is a research assistant at the Chair of Modern History at the Department of History of the University of Zurich. In his dissertation, he explores the contemporary history of comparative behavioral research as a public science in the Federal Republic of Germany between 1950 and 1990.
Paola Juan holds a bachelor's degree in ethnology (University of Neuchâtel), in history and sciences of religions (University of Lausanne) and a master's degree in social anthropology (London School of Economics and Political Science). She is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lausanne.
Niki Rhyner is a doctoral student at the Chair for Science Studies at ETH Zurich. Her research focuses on the intersection of the histories of anthropology and economics. In her dissertation, she examines the role of ethnographic field research in the context of European integration.
11:30–12:00 Session 2: Ecology, Environment, Energy (chair: Dania Achermann, UNIBE)
Simon Lobach works specializing on the environmental history of Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly the position of traditional people in expanding extraction activities in the Caribbean Amazon. Simon has a broad academic background in History, Latin American Studies and International Affairs, and several years of professional experience in international environmental cooperation. Having lived and worked in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Brazil, Simon is fully fluent in six languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Dutch.
Nicolas Chachereau holds a PhD from the University of Lausanne, and is currently a researcher at the University of Lyon thanks to a SNF Early Postdoc.Mobility fellowship. His research project focuses on the history of energy, more specifically on the oil infrastructures in Switzerland.
Mona Bieling is a PhD student in the International History Department at the Graduate Institute Geneva. Her research is entitled "Landscape and Power in Mandate Palestine, 1917-1948". Her dissertation discusses several types of landscape changes in the British Mandate for Palestine and asks how these have influenced the power relationships between the Jewish, Arab and British communities involved.
12:00–13:30 Lunch break
13:30–14:30 Panel discussion 2
13:30-14:00: Session 3: Science, Politics, Expertise (chair: Jérôme Baudry, EPFL)
Barbara Emma Hof wrote a dissertation on „Nuclear Education. Big Science and the rising demand for technoscientific expertise" at the University of Zurich with the intention of understanding what „knowledge society“ means. She is currently a visiting scholar and online lecturer at the University of Lüneburg. This summer she start a new research project shifting her focus from the nuclear age to the digital age, again at the University of Zurich.
Amandine Cabrio works as a PHD student at the University of Neuchâtel. Along with Julien Gressot and Romain Jeanneret, she is part of the SNF project « L’Observatoire cantonal de Neuchâtel (1858-1948) : culture de la précision, certification de la qualité et marchandisation de l’heure », directed by Prof. Gianenrico Bernasconi. Her PHD aims to analyze the role and the impact of the Neuchatel Observatory on the watch industry through the expertise of chronometers and others time instruments.
Michael Hutter is a historian working on knowledge infrastructures and international relations, with a particular focus on scientific & environmental knowledge, multilateral negotiations, and science diplomacy. He is passionate about contributing to the establishment of dialogue & exchange amid controversy. He did his Master's degree at Sciences Po Paris, started his PhD at the University of Vienna and is currently completing it at the University of Lausanne.
14:00–14:30 Session 4: Food, Health, and the Body (chair: Lisa Haushofer, UZH)
Elise Tancoigne is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Geography and Sustainability of the University of Lausanne. Her research focuses on the history of the modernization of the dairy industry and the governance of dairy microbes since the 1970s. She works on case studies in France, Switzerland and Jordan.
Efrat Gilad is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Bern where she conducts research and teaches courses related to Jewish history and Environmental History. Her work concerns social and cultural histories of food, consumption, and the environment, especially the intertwined histories of food and animals in urban colonial and settler-colonial settings. Efrat Gilad completed her PhD in International History at The Graduate Institute, Geneva in 2021, where her doctoral project was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation’s Doc.CH grant. She is currently working on a book manuscript - Meat in the Heat - on the history of meat production and consumption in British Mandate Palestine.
Marco Storni is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Neuchâtel. After completing his doctorate at the École Normale Supérieure of Paris and the University of Bologna, he has been graduate assistant at the University of Neuchâtel, Herzog-Ernst fellow at the Gotha Research Centre of the University of Erfurt, and postdoctoral fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. His first book "Maupertuis. Le philosophe, l’académicien, le polémiste" is forthcoming with Honoré Champion.
Monique Ligtenberg has been a PhD candidate at the Chair for History of the Modern World, ETH Zurich, since October 2019. Her research project 'Medicine, Masculinities, and Colonial Warfare' focuses on physicians from Germanophone Europe in the service of the Dutch Empire in Southeast Asia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
14:30–15:00 Break
15:00–16:00 Panel discussion 3
15:00–15:30 Session 5: Economics, Economies, Economic Thought (chair: Wendelin Brühwiler, Programme Manager History at Schwabe Verlag)
Theresa Steffestun is a socioeconomist working in the fields of history of economic thought, philosophy of science and economic education. She is currently pursuing her PhD on the concepts of psyche and power in the works of the Austrian Economists Wieser and Hayek at the Walras-Pareto Center in Lausanne under the supervision of Harro Maas. Additionally, Theresa is establishing pluralist and problem-centered programs of economic education at the Cusanus University (Germany).
Ryan Whitacre (PhD, UCSF & UC Berkeley) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute, and a Visiting Fellow in the Center for Social Medicine at UC Berkeley. Ryan is working with Professor Vinh-Kim Nguyen on a multi-year research project examining the impact of financialization on global health through a series of pharmaceutical case studies. Based on this research he is writing a monograph which conceptualizes the history and future of the “antiviral economy.”
Monika Wulz is a historian and philosopher of science. She will be a postdoc at the Chair for Science Studies at the University of Lucerne in 2021/2022. Monika Wulz received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Vienna with a dissertation on the epistemology of the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (Erkenntnisagenten. Gaston Bachelard und die Reorganisation des Wissens, Berlin 2010). After positions at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, at the Chair for History of Science at the University of Konstanz, and at the Chair for Science Studies at ETH Zurich, she was the coordinator of the joint doctoral program “History of Knowledge” at ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich. At the moment, she is writing her book on “Economies of intellectual work, 1870s–1940s”.
15:30–16:00 Session 6: Precision, Calibration, Representation (chair: Tina Asmussen, Bergbaumuseum Bochum)
After an apprenticeship as a programmer, Samuel Hunziker obtained a BA in Philosophy and History from the University of Zurich and an MA in History and Philosophy of Knowledge from ETH Zurich. He currently works on a project on formal approaches to programming errors. He is interested in questions surrounding computing, the politics of formalization, and video games.
Katharina Steiner is currently a postdoctoral Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the University of Geneva. Her research project "Depicting Species: The Role of Images in Modern Biology" explores the uses and reuses of zoological illustrations.
Julien Gressot is PhD student at the University of Neuchâtel and participates in a project on the History of the Neuchâtel Observatory. In this context, he is interested in the cultures of precision and the scientific instruments of this institution.
16:10–16:20 Closing Remarks (Michael Hagner)
16:20 Farewell and Next Meeting (Felix Rietmann, HSSuisse 2022 in Fribourg)