2025 AAHPSSS Conference
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 full program for the conference can be downloaded here.
The signature event for the conference will be the annual Dyason Lecture on Wednesday 3rd December. Professor Peter Harrison (University of Queensland/University of Notre Dame) will speak on ‘Protestant Origins of Modern Science?’. Other events will include plenaries from historians, philosophers and sociologists of science, workshops for postgraduate students and early career academics, and a panel discussion on diversity within the field of HPS. There will be organised tours of some of the museums at the University of Queensland. An informal conference dinner will be held on Thursday 4th December.
As usual, we will award the Langham Prize for the best presentation by a postgraduate student and travel bursaries are available for postgraduate and insecurely employed academics to assist travel from within Australia to present at the conference in person.
The Dyason Lecture – Protestant Origins of Modern Science?
Wednesday 3 December, University of Queensland
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.
Langham Bursaries
Bursaries will be available for postgrads and insecurely-employed academics resident in Australia outside south-east Queensland or in New Zealand to attend in-person.
Members of AAHPSSS who are participating in the 2025 AAHPSSS conference and who need travel support may apply for an Ian Langham Bursary. Applications should include a brief statement of need for the bursary, including a description of any alternative sources of funding that may be available to the applicant, and a quote from a travel agent to indicate expected travel costs. Applications will not be accepted from non-members, from members in south-east Queensland, or from members in secure employment.
The Langham Bursary covers travel costs only. It does not cover the costs of accommodation, meals or incidentals. The Bursary is paid as a reimbursement subsequent to the conference, upon provision of relevant receipts and bank account details, and will be made as expeditiously as possible upon provision of these.
The total funding for each application is capped and the number of bursaries provided is limited. Assessments will be made on the basis of how well the applicant’s research engages with the purposes of AAHPSSS and the demonstrated need.
Further information on applications for the Ian Langham Bursary will be made available once abstracts have been accepted.
Langham Prize
Postgraduate students may have their papers considered for the Langham Prize for the best paper by a graduate student. Presentations must be a single paper and may be presented as a stand-alone paper or part of an organised session. Panel discussions, workshops and co-presentations will not usually be considered. Details about how to apply will be posted soon.
Registration
Registration is now open.
| In-person 3-day | In-person 1-day | Remote | ||||
| Full | Concession | Full | Concession | Full | Concession | |
| Member | $285 | $180 | $125 | $75 | Free | Free |
| Non-member | $345 | $210 | $155 | $90 | $25 | $15 |