We are pleased to announce that registration for the 2025 conference of the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (AAHPSSS) is now open. The conference will be held in a hybrid format at the University of Queensland from Wednesday 3rd December to Friday 5th December.
Already in the seventeenth century the sequence of the Protestant Reformation and the Scientific revolution led some to speculate about how these ‘dual reformations’ were related. Ever since, various thinkers have posited causal links between them. This lecture will consider a range of such possible connections – the Protestant ‘ethic’, challenges to tradition, new interpretative approaches to scripture and nature, ideas about the earthly vocation, and eschatological ideas that focused on material improvement. It will conclude with a consideration of the ways in which ‘Protestant’ versions of history, in a secularized form, came to be incorporated in Enlightenment stories of progress and ironically became implicated in the construction of science-religion conflict narratives in the nineteenth century.
About the speaker: Peter Harrison is Emeritus Professor of History and Philosophy at the University of Queensland and Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, Australia. He was previously the Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford. From 2015-21 he was an Australian Laureate Fellow. He has published extensively on the philosophical, scientific and religious thought of the early modern period, and is one of the world’s leading scholars on the historical relations between science and religion.
The deadline for abstract submissions for the 2025 AAHPSSS Conference have been extended. Submissions are now due by August 8th. Abstracts can be submitted here.
We are pleased to announce that the 2025 conference of the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (AAHPSSS) will be held in a hybrid format at the University of Queensland from Wednesday 3rd December to Friday 5th December.
The signature event for the conference will be the annual Dyason Lecture, presented in 2025 by Professor Peter Harrison (University of Queensland/University of Notre Dame). Other highlights will include keynote presentations from speakers across the range of HPS disciplines, special events for postgrads and early career academics, and other organised workshops. As usual, we will award the Langham Prize for the best presentation by a postgraduate student.
We invite participation from scholars working in any area related to the history, philosophy and social studies of science, medicine or technology (including science and technology studies, sociology of health, environmental humanities, science communication, science policy, and metascience). We will be accepting submissions for:
Full papers (20 minutes) – to be allocated to sessions
Short presentations (10 minutes) – to be allocated to sessions
Organised sessions (90 minutes) – format and presenters arranged by organisers
Early-career academics, research students and scholars from historically underrepresented or disadvantaged groups, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, women, people with disabilities, and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are encouraged to apply. Bursaries will be available for postgrads and insecurely-employed academics who reside outside south-east Queensland to attend in-person.
Details and RSVP: https://otagomuseum.nz/whats-on/pounamu-and-the-history-of-knowledge
Pounamu, also known as “greenstone” and “New Zealand jade,” stands as a cornerstone in the narrative of Aotearoa New Zealand, embodying the essence of the land and the people. This is reflected in the indigenous name for the South Island, Te Waipounamu, which means “place of pounamu” or “waters of pounamu.”
Since its initial discovery post-Polynesian settlement, pounamu has been bound up with key episodes in Aotearoa’s history, from trade networks and technological adaptation in the pre-colonial period through to the Ngāi Tahu Treaty Settlement in 1998.
Along the way, pounamu has encountered many different knowledge traditions. The traditions of Kāi Tahu and other iwi Māori are the most important of these, but the stone has also been studied outside Aotearoa and by non-Māori New Zealanders, through the lens of many different disciplines: pūkōrero (traditional histories), whakairo (carving), physics, gemmology, museology, and more.
Pounamu is a window onto the historical relationship between these traditions, and onto the wider questions they raise. How does Western science interweave with Mātauraka Māori (Māori knowledge)? How do the natural sciences relate to the humanities? What effect did colonisation have on the study of pounamu, and what pathways exist to rectify and reconcile these legacies? What does the future hold for pounamu knowledge? The session will address these questions and explore how the study of pounamu can flourish using different ways of knowing.
The 27th International Congress of History of Science and Technology will be held from 29 June – 5 July 2025 at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. Symposium Proposals are due by 1 May 2024. Standalone Papers are due by 1 December 2024. For further details, please go to the Congress website: https://www.ichst2025.org
Conference Details
The International Congress of History of Science and Technology(ICHST), held every four years, is the world’s premier meeting for history of science and technology. The 27th Congress will be held as a hybrid in-person and online event at the University of Otago’s Dunedin campus in June-July 2025. Delegates registered for virtual participation will be able to both present and attend online. The Congress will bring together a diverse group of the world’s leading scholars and students in the fields of history of science, technology, and medicine as well as related disciplines. It will be the first time the Congress has been held in Australasia and only the second time in the Southern Hemisphere. The theme of the 27th ICHST is “Peoples, Places, Exchanges, and Circulation.”
Critical Social Science Approaches to Epidemic Intelligence
21-22 March 2024
Organizers: Professor Sonja van Wichelen (University of Sydney), Associate Professor Kari Lancaster (UNSW), and Professor Warwick Anderson (University of Sydney)
Workshop Précis
The role of the social sciences in enhancing the social and cultural complexity of epidemic intelligence has been recognised, and in some contexts, institutionalised. Yet, most of the input from the social sciences have been restricted to those coming from the psychological or behavioural sciences, emphasizing, on the level of epistemology, positivistic values of experimental evidence, and on the level of policy, the belief and commitment to the behavioural economic framework of nudging. By bringing together critical social science scholars from medical anthropology, sociology of medicine, the history and philosophy of science, and science and technology studies, this workshop explores how a critical social science of epidemic intelligence can contribute to a more complex conceptualisation of epidemic intelligence, which could advance effective disease modelling.
The workshop will provide a cross-disciplinary conversation between social science scholars aiming to do four things. First, engaging with the current, and with previous global pandemics, we intend to assess how the sociological inputs and metrics have been integrated with disease models and understandings of epidemic intelligence. Second, we aim to interrogate how more critical approaches to epidemic intelligence—linked to social medicine, disease ecology, biosocial approaches, and planetary health—can more adequately capture the biosocial conditions in which viruses become pathogenic. Third, we want to examine what modelling does, sociologically and politically, to the time frames and perceived configurations of epidemic disease. And, finally, we take this opportunity to also think about how our findings could inform science policy and can offer an alternative to the governance of nudge worlds.
Call for Expression of Interest
The workshop is interdisciplinary in nature and brings together scholars from Europe, the US and Asia across a range of disciplines. In order to identify and include Early Career Researchers working in this area in Australia, we are opening a call for expression of interest. The University of Sydney will contribute to costs for travel and accommodation.
There are two ways to participate: as a presenter of a thought-piece or as an active participant in discussions. As funding is limited, priority for funding will be given to presenter of thought pieces. The deadline for a statement of purpose (300-500 words) and a one-page CV is November 30th, 2023. Please send these materials to Rachel Yang: r.yang@sydney.edu.au
We will notify you of the outcome by Mid December at the latest. Thought-pieces (3-5 pages) should be submitted by the first week of March so that we can disseminate prior to the workshop. The plan is to compile papers for an edited volume pitched at Cambridge University Press.
If you were trying to register for the Conference, or set up a membership account, we now have the ability to accept payment via debit/credit cards and bank payment. Unfortunately a bug somewhere is blocking our use of PayPal, and we have not been able to find out why.
The registration for the conference is now available. Select the Conference button to see what is currently known, and select the Register button to go directly to registration.
