Workshop 11.10.2018 – 12.10.2018

Location: Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, Germany

Conveners: Ulrike Kirchberger (Kassel University), Christof Mauch (RCC)

In the age of high imperialism, thousands of species of plants and animals were transferred between Australia, Asia, and Africa. Some of them were exchanged deliberately for economic, scientific, or aesthetic reasons. European settlers, for example, transported cattle, horses, and sheep between South Africa, Asia, and Australia; camels were exported from Northern India to Australia; and exotic birds from South Asia, such as, for example, the Myna bird, were taken to Australia and South Africa. Other species traveled between the continents accidentally, as stowaways. Whether intentional or not, these transfers changed ecologies and livelihoods on the three continents forever. This workshop aims to uncover the exchanges that have modified African, Asian, and Australian environments. Integrating both human and nonhuman agency in our understanding of ecological networks, we will ask in our workshop how different participants in the transfers related to each other and how these relationships changed in the context of ecological transfers. In our workshop we will examine in particular how Europeans built on non-European traditions of species transfer, and we will investigate where colonial exchanges met with opposition. Moreover, we will track the extent to which species transfers across the Indian Ocean led to a greater awareness of ecological imbalances, environmental destruction, and climate change. We aim to reassess the significance of the networks and transfers across the Indian Ocean in the broader context of imperial and global relations. By these means we hope to develop an agenda that integrates the transfer processes between the three continents into a transoceanic environmental history.

You can read the full conference report on the RCC blog here.

Tensions of Europe Summer School

“Towards Digital Science and Technology Studies: Challenges and Opportunities” (Luxembourg, 25-27 June 2019)

We live in the digital age which has a huge impact on the way we do scholarly research. For emerging careers it seems to be particularly pivotal. One the one hand, digitalization brings opportunities enlarging the methodological and thematic horizons. On the other hand, it sets a number of challenges on how to employ various methods, use new digital applications, and adapt to a rapidly changing academic community. But why do we actually need digital methods in our research?

The Early career scholars network (https://www.tensionsofeurope.eu/tensions-of-europe-early-career-scholars-network/) of Tensions of Europe in connection to the 9th Tensions of Europe (ToE) Conference (https://www.tensionsofeurope.eu/about-us/conferences/), organizes a Summer School to discuss challenges and opportunities in the field of science and technology studies (STS). The Summer School relates to the overall conference theme “Decoding Europe: Technological Pasts in the Digital Age”. We invite participants from the field of science, technology and medicine studies, both from historical and other social disciplines.

We envisage an interdisciplinary dialog and propose to discuss the following questions, among others:

• Why does digital history matter?

• What are challenges /obstacles of doing digital history and how to cope with them?

• What are specificities of digital history of technology and, more broadly, STS?

• What are opportunities of digital humanities?

• What digitalization and historic source criticism mean?

• What is specific in teaching digital history and using digital methods?

• How do we imagine the future of STS in the age of digitalization?

We hope for a fruitful discussion that can inspire and help all participants in their future research and explicitly invite young scholars not specifically working on digitalization, but are interested in the topic. The school will include lectures, master classes, workshops, discussion rounds and outdoor activities.

The Early career scholars network

The Tensions of Europe Early career scholars network is self-organized and gathers PhD students, post-doctoral scholars and non-tenured academics. The network is supported and acts as part of the Tensions of Europe Network. The general aim is to actively engage in debates within ToE and to facilitate international networking among young scholars. The network provides an informal, open space for discussing research ideas and career development.

Location and travel grants

The summer school will take place in Luxembourg from the 25th and the 27th June, 2019 in the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH). The participants of the summer school are expected to be on-site, but in some of the sessions, we might also be able to include a few on-line participants. Those who apply for that option should include that in their application. The ToE network will offer travel grants for conference participants. To apply for these travel grants, the Summer School participants will also have to attend the conference.

Schedule

In order to promote network building, the Summer School is organized to a large extend around workshops and group discussions. It will start on Tuesday (25 June) afternoon and will last until Thursday, 12:30. Participants will be asked to read texts and write short contributions for the workshops describing their own challenges with digitalization. Invited experts will make short presentations on relevant topics, which will be followed by discussions. The deadline for submitting these contributions will also be communicated to the participants at that time.

How to apply

In order to participate, we invite applicants to submit a short bio (no more than one page) and a short text (350-500 words) explaining their interest in the topics of the summer school and how their work would benefit from these discussions. Proposals should be sent until 30th January 2019 to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with a title “ToE Summer School Proposal”.