History of science & technology @EPFL

Digital Archives of Science The archive of science preserves the sediments of scientific practices: drafts, protocols of rejected hypotheses and failed experiments, obsolete instruments and other vestiges of knowledge-making. As...

🎉 Congratulations to Alina Volynskaya @c2dh.uni.lu on the publication of her book, Digital Archives of Science: Revisiting the Vestiges of Knowledge‑Making!
The volume builds on the brilliant PhD thesis she completed in the lab between 2020 & 2024. #DH #histSTM
www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

CfP: Intellectual Furniture. A (Pre-)History of Large Language Models CfP: Intellectual Furniture. A (Pre-)History of Large Language Models International Workshop, University of Basel, 10.–11. September 2026 In 1696, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz noted, that we are in need of tools, bodily aids or mentally aids, to think with. He not only phrased his idea in reference to Francis Bacon's New Organon, but also, presumably, with his scrinium litterarum in mind (or, even maybe directly interacting with it), his tailor-made cabinet which he mobilised to organise, reshuffle, and arrange his ideas on slips of paper. This cabinet or tool of thinking, though lost in Hanover during the turmoil of WWII, may serve as the historical starting point to examine the long history of devices in which language is organized and operationalized in its materiality to serve as a tool of thinking due to specific concepts of order and connection, be it on moveable slips, be it on standardised pages or cards, be it on tiny notes or kept in files, be it clipped to a rod or be it stored in different drawers or hidden chambers, which are only opened by triggering a subtle mechanism. The notes and language particles in these devices are deposited by scholars or literary authors at certain positions in order to be retrieved later for a regular query, a special question or to encounter it again by chance. It is due to the specific design and its constellation of notes that these devices offer a certain mode of artificial intelligence in an analogue sense. The devices are designed for fostering ingenuity while they also act as externalised memories for their users. Like personal databases and huge individual language models in the analogue age they are supposed to provide answers to their users' inquiries – just as Google's search bar or ChatBots' prompt fields of the presence wait for the authors to answer their questions and develop their lines of thought in close communication between device and user.

 With a retrospective look on the long media history of artificial intelligence focussing on scholars/literary authors and their writing aids, we want to sound out the differences and also the similarities between historical ways of interacting with »intelligent« devices and the strategies of current interactions with AI models. While taking a look at the foundations of (electronic) computability as well as at varying constellations in which an actor, using specific rules and strategies, enters into an intellectual dialogue with a device in order to jointly arrive at new thoughts, the workshop indulges in different genealogies of devices to think with while asking for case studies, scenarios, histories and analytical accounts of intellectual furniture from the early modern period to the presence in order to discuss different types of »large language models« before and within the era of today's AI models.

 What does it mean to communicate with an assemblage of (mainly) wood and paper in the age before electricity and in which ways is intelligence implemented in the device? On the conceptual, historiographical level we are interested in how we can conceive and describe the ways of interacting between author and the intellectual furniture as a dialogue partner while finding new constellations of knowledge? Which theoretical approaches prove to be most promising to analyze the (mechanical) intelligence built into the devices? What concepts of agency help to scrutinize the emergence of inspiration during the human-machine-interaction?

 The workshop shall bring together scholars and historians of note-taking and media devices (such as slip boxes, card catalogs, filing systems and alike) with curators and art historians with an expertise in writing desks and intellectual furniture of all kind in order to carve out the main lines and avenues of the precursors of today's large language models.

 We kindly invite for proposals (one pdf page) with an abstract and contact details to be submitted to Yannick Nepomuk Fritz (yannick.fritz@unibas.ch) by April 3, 2026. Notification of acceptance will be given by April 24, 2026. Travel costs and accommodation for invited speakers can be covered. Organisiert von University of Basel CS 11. März 2026 Website der Veranstaltung Call for Papers Image for Content

CfP: Intellectual Furniture. A (Pre-)History of Large Language Models #infoclioevent

Pour accompagner la parution du 3e tome d'histoire environnementale de la France, "Les natures du productivisme", une bibliographie et une chronologie sont mises à disposition sur le site @leruche.bsky.social :
leruche.hypotheses.org/une-histoire...
@eseh.bsky.social

Tolle Doktoratsstelle bei meinem sehr sehr geschätzen Kollegen Nils Güttler an der Uni Wien im NOMIS- project “Science for the People: Social Movements and Knowledge Production, 1960s–1990s”.

jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Wiss_-Pr...

Appel à manifestation d’intérêt – Atelier jeunes chercheur·es “Désindustrialisation et environnement” Date : 22 juin 2026 Lieu : Sciences Po, Paris Date limite de proposition : 31 mars 2026 Texte de l’AMI : Dans la continuité de la thématique du séminaire “Les sociétés industrielles en crise” qui s’es...

Appel à manifestation d’intérêt – Atelier jeunes chercheur·es “Désindustrialisation et environnement”

Date : 22 juin 2026
Lieu : Sciences Po, Paris
Date limite de proposition : 31 mars 2026

ajch.hypotheses.org/9162

ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIP IN HISTORY OF SCIENCE
My home department at Uppsala University is advertising an endowed professorship in the history of science. This is the best position in the field in Sweden, and probably in all of Scandinavia. Apply before 30 April 2026. www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...

AAC 1er juin 2026 – Conserver les liquides : adaptations, circulations, interférences Appel à communications / Call for Proposals Conserver les liquides : adaptations, circulations, interférences Paris, 3 et 4 décembre 2026 Conserving Liquids: Adaptation, Circulation, Interferences Par...

Call for proposals! "Conserving Liquids: Adaptation, Circulation, Interferences" workshop, in Paris, 3-4 December 2026.
More info: tph.hypotheses.org/2234
#histtech #archeology #histSTM

🚨 Postdoc Opportunity in NYC 🚨

Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Science and Technology, Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University

#histstm #histsci #histtech

apply.interfolio.com/181865

Le rez-de jardin de la BNF (@labnf.bsky.social) s'éteint, littéralement, en silence. Les places en rouge sur ce schéma ne sont plus éclairées et l'on nous apprend que les ampoules, devenues obsolètes, ne peuvent être remplacées. "Democracy Dies in Darkness", comme on le sait au Washington Post.

Does thinking about research in book-sized chunks constrain the ways we do historical research? It's something I have been wondering about... @standrewshist.bsky.social See: online.ucpress.edu/hsns/article...

Augusta Dimou: Contesting Copyright. A History of Intellectual Property in East Central Europe and the Balkans. CEU Press 2026. ISBN 9789633866146. More: www.aup.nl/en/book/9...
OA: www.taylorfrancis.co...

Bon sinon semaine pro c'est la première du séminaire "Socio-histoire de l'enseignement supérieur et de la recherche" avec les camarades Emmanuelle Picard, @etiennebordes.bsky.social et Julien Barrier, à Paris et en visio, avec la thune de l'IUF et du LLE. Deeeemandez le programme

Usages, usagers et utopies : la place des publics dans la Bibliothèque de France (1988-1998) BnF - Site institutionnel

[ #Evenement ] Simon Dumas Primbault participe au séminaire « Usages, usagers et utopies : la place des publics dans la Bibliothèque de France (1988-1998) » @labnf.bsky.social

📆20 février 2026
📍Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France

www.bnf.fr/fr/agenda/us...

Appel à communications – Colloque international et interdisciplinaire : “Savoirs olfactifs. Connaître par l’odorat, du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours” Lieu : maison française d’Oxford Date : 22-23 octobre 2026 Date limite pour soumettre une proposition : 15 avril 2026 Organisation : Rémi Digonnet, Université Jean Monnet de Saint-Étienne/ECLLA, Judit...

AAC – Colloque international et interdisciplinaire : “Savoirs olfactifs. Connaître par l’odorat, du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours”

Lieu : maison française d’Oxford
Date : 22-23 octobre 2026
Date limite pour soumettre une proposition : 15 avril 2026

ajch.hypotheses.org/8790

📖 Parution : Guillaume Carnino, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Sébastien Pautet (dir.), "Techniques et religions
Cultures techniques, croyances, circulations de l’Antiquité à nos jours", Brepols, janvier 2026.

🔎 Lien éditeur ➡️ www.brepols.net/products/IS-...

Newly launched scholarship program for researchers from the fields of history, knowledge curation, information and archival sciences afz.ethz.ch/en/teaching-...

Another truly generous and multifaceted academic gone 😭 he was such a kind human with sparkle and mischief in his eyes

RIP Wolfgang Lefevre, historian and theoretician of science, 1941-2026

Science et exil politique dans l’Europe du XIXe siècle

🧪 Au XIXe siècle, des scientifiques sont contraints à l'exil, souvent pour des raisons politiques.
Comment leurs recherches sont-elles affectées par ce déplacement contraint ?
🖋️ Découvrez les explications d'@antonindurand.bsky.social

🤝 @lettres-sorbonne.bsky.social @aphg.bsky.social

ICOHTEC is pleased to announce the 2026 Maurice Daumas Prize: www.icohtec.org/prizes/mauri...
The prize will be awarded at ICOHTEC’s 53rd Annual Meeting in Greece: icohtec2026.hs.duth.gr

Associate/Full Professor of Curatorial Practice Director of Centre for Art, Science and Biocultural Ecologies (CASBE) Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Young, research intensive, and outward-looking Nanyang Technological University, Singa...

Center for Art, Science, and Biocultural Ecologies Directorship call! This Center in Singapore also collaborates w Max Planck Inst. History of Science @mpiwg.bsky.social. Pls share w folks committed to putting interdisciplinary research results into action! #HistSci #art #EnvHum Deadline 5 Feb

Mesurer la température avec des crayons de couleurs ? Découvrez les crayons thermiques A.W. Faber-Castell capables de mesurer la température de surface par changement de couleur, de 65 à 600 °C.

Mesurer la température avec des crayons de couleurs ?

C'est possible avec les crayons thermiques ! mumons.be/piecesdumois...

Happy new year.

A reminder that the deadline for paper proposal for the annual workshop 2026 in Sao Paolo is this Friday 🕰️

This year's theme is "Intellectual Property and Democracy".

We hope you can join us!

we're hiring in STS @fasosmaastricht.bsky.social!

deadline coming up soon (February 8). focus is the social science-y corners of STS preferably w/ some interest in sustainability & environment - but interpreted broadly.

vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/job/Maastric...

Postdoctoral Research Associate | King's College London

I'm hiring 2 postdocs on my Wellcome project "How Did Infectious Diseases Become Wild?: Plague, Yellow Fever, and Disease Ecology in the Brazilian Hinterland (1920-1975)"

Department of Global Health and Social Medicine
King's College
3 years 01/10/26- 30/09/29
Deadline: 01/02/26
shorturl.at/KZ6Vh

On January 14–15, the Musée d’Histoire des sciences in Geneva will host the international conference “Beyond Books: Instruments and Knowledge in Libraries”, which we are co-organizing with Rossella Baldi, Samuel Gessner, and Laurence-Isaline Stahl Gretsch. Join us if you're around! Full program 👇

The deadline for paper proposals has been extended to

🗓️ 16 January 2026!

We would be grateful if you could forward this call to your respective networks, particularly those in the humanities.

Please find details for the call for paper here: ishtip.org/forthcoming-...

14 two-year postdocs for academics of any nationality who cannot continue their research due to US politics. Do share if you know of such.

New article on the patent systems in colonial history, full open access: bmgn-lchr.nl/article/view...

Please join us for a timely discussion on intellectual property and democracy (and other IP theory and history matters) in June in Brazil!

Details on CfP: