The AG Wissenschaftsgeschichte at Vienna University, founded in 1992 and previously convened by Mitchell Ash and Marianne Klemun, comes together for regular meetings. Members and invited guests discuss their own research based on pre-circulated work in progress. If you like to present or participate, please contact the current conveners Anna Echterhölter, Nils Güttler and Sebastian Felten (wissenschaftsgeschichte.hkw@univie.ac.at).
Summer 2025
11:30-13:00 CET, Währingerstrasse 29, Seminarraum 6
27 March 2025: "Organising, Optimising and Concealing Science: On Political Epistemologies in Central and Eastern Europe“ (New Organon)
Jan Surman (Prague Academy of Science), Friedrich Cain (University of Vienna) and Bernhard Kleeberg (University of Erfurt)
10 April 2025, Julie Klinger (University of Delaware) and Eleanor Armstrong (University of Leicester), co-hosted with the SCARCE Project
22 May 2025, "A Genealogy of Resources"
Daniel Mayr (HU-Berlin)
2025 (postponed), "Historicizing planetarity. Trans-imperial circulations, Western elites and planetary environmental knowledge and alerts around 1900"
Christophe Bonneuil, Centre de Recherches Historiques (Paris, Cnrs-Ehess)
Winter 2024
1 October 2024: 11:30-13:00 "Dialogues about rights of nature, indigenous communities and property rights"
María Valeria Berros (Universidad Nacional del Litoral and CONICET Researcher Argentina)
19 November 2024: 11:45-13:00 "Assessments of Peasant Property: Measuring the Material Impact of the Austrian Code of Civil Procedure of 1895"
Borbála Zsuzsanna Török (IÖG / Institute of Austrian Historical Studies, Universität Wien / University of Vienna):
17 December 2024: 11:30-13:30 "'Counter-planning from the shop floor'. Alternative Ökonomien, situiertes Planungwissen und der Lucas Plan"-
Verena Halsmayer (Lucerne/Vienna)
'Conducing to the knowledge of the universe and trade': the Role of Goldsmiths in Materializing the Early Modern Globe
Claire Sabel (Philadelphia/Vienna)
Summer 2024
23 May 2024: "Infrastructures, Innovation and Global Politics" (Kritische Sicherheitsforschung, ERC Futurespace)" (postponed)
Nina Klimburg-Witjes (Vienna)
13 June 2024: "Medical Humanities and Planetary Health"
Janina Kehr (Vienna)
Winter 2023
16 October 2023: "History of Science meets Political Epistemology"
Summer 2023
27 April 2023: "Atmospheric Politics in the Indian Ocean"
Debjani Bhattacharyya: Chair of History of the Anthropocene (Universität Zürich)
5 Mai 2023: "Towards a new framework for historicizing the future"
Jamie Petrushka (Rutgers University), invitation together with Christian Dayé, TU Graz
5 June 2023: Simon Schaffer (Cambridge) on the invitation of Martin Kusch (Vienna)
These meetings were also International EST Colloquia.
Winter 2022
10 October 2022: "Die Arbeitsgruppen der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft an den ostdeutschen Universitäten 1991-1998, oder: Wie eine erfolgreiche Kooperation universitärer und außeruniversitärer Forschung aufgrund einer grundfalschen Annahme entstand"
Mitchell Ash (Vienna), comment by Jaromír Dittmann-Balcar (MPIWG, Berlin) and Bernd Gausemeier (Medizinische Hochschule Hannover)
14 November 2022: "'Polen 2000' als wissenschaftliches und politisches Programm: Institutionalisierung der Zukunftsforschung von 1969 bis 1976"
Lukas Becht (RECET, Vienna), comment by Jan Surman (Department for History, Czech Academy of Sciences)
12 December 2022: "Prozess und Feld: Zu Innovationsstudien in der Wissenschaftsforschung in der DDR um 1980"
Friedrich Cain (Fakultätszentrum für Transdisziplinäre Studien, Vienna), comment by Till Düppe (Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM))
9 January 2023: "Colonial Statistics in the French Caribbean" entfällt
Fanny Malègue (EHESS, CENA / Mondes Américains, Paris)
Summer 2022
23 May 2022: "Images of Science in Czechoslovakia 1918-1968"
Jan Surman (Department for History, Czech Academy of Sciences), commentary by Rosamund Johnston (Vienna)
25 April 2022: "Very early, the enjoyment of nature research and mountaineering awoke in me.” Autobiographic narratives of lives in geology (early 20th century, Vienna)
Sandra Klos (Vienna), commentary by Alexander Stöger (Leiden)
14 March 2022: "Science and Russian Orthodoxy" (postponed)
Karl Hall (Vienna/Budapest)
Winter 2021
31 January 2022: "Economic calculation in the home: Accounting in bourgeois and working-class households in imperial Austria and Germany"
Max Ehrenfreund (Harvard)
13 December 2021: "Systems Worlds: The Making of Sustainability Science at IIASA"
Isabell Schrickel (Lüneburg), comment by Verena Halsmayer (Lucerne)
29 November 2021: "A Tale of Two Journals: Editorial Gatekeeping Dynamics of Different Ways of Knowing and Their Epistemic Impact During the “Maturation Phase” of Modern Cell Biology in the 1960s and 1970s"
Hanna Worliczek (Vienna/Berlin), comment by Dominic Berry (Birmingham)
Summer 2021
14 Juni 2021: "Die Werkzeuge der heilpädagogischen Station. Netzwerke und Aktenführung"
Nikolaus Thoman (Vienna), comment by Andrew Mendelsohn (London)
26 April 2021: "Habsburg Intellectual History in a Global Context: A Counter-Reformation Account"
Thomas Wallnig (Vienna) and Ines Peper (Vienna), comment by Martin Gierl (Göttingen) From 5 pm to 7 pm.
12 April 2021: "The Global Data of Nuclear Winter and Acid Rain: Navigating the Cold War Research Infrastructures at IIASA in Laxenburg"
Eglė Rindzevičiūtė (London). This is a joint event with the Forschungsschwerpunkt Wissenschaftsgeschichte.
22 March 2021: "Animals and Humans in Action: Knowledge-Making and World Orders in a 17th-Century Ottoman Manuscript"
Dogan Karakelle (Berlin), comment by Kerstin Weich (Vienna)
Winter 2020
25 January 2021: Data at the Doorstep
Laurens Schlicht (Saarbrücken), Sophie Ledebur (Berlin), Anna Echterhölter (Vienna)
7 December 2020: The Science of Money: Isaac Newton's Mastering of the Mint
Alice Maples (Oxford), comment by Cesare Pastorino (Berlin