ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Shifting Perspectives on Data: Revealing Imbalances in Global Scientific Networks_1

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

In an era of burgeoning data-intensive science, the global circulation of research data has become a crucial arena for understanding scientific authority, international cooperation, and geopolitical asymmetries. Drawing on the ERC-funded NEWORLD@A project (2022–2026), this session approaches this terrain through the lens of science diplomacy, highlighting the importance for historians of science of shifting perspectives and focusing more on the diplomatic negotiations that shaped the architecture and asymmetries of world data exchange. This session therefore brings together contributions from the project examining distinct yet interconnected case studies through different analytical frameworks that combine quantitative and qualitative methods and integrate non-Western narratives. The case studies presented encompass a wide spectrum: from the space- and time-dependent datasets of astronomers, Earth scientists, geographers, and conservation biologists to the universal constants used by physicists and chemists. The session also aims to show that, by shifting perspectives on data, it is possible to move beyond the conventional view of scientific data circulation as a purely cooperative endeavor, exposing instead the deep-seated imbalances that have shaped scientific development globally.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Sara Bassanelli, Politecnico di Torino

Individual Presentations

• A New World of Data? How Charting Past Asymmetries in Scientific Data Can Shift Our Perspective on Their Current International Sharing Patterns - Simone Turchetti, University of Manchester

• Ancestries of Data Asymmetries in Physics: How the Diplomacy of Standards Prefigured CODATA’s Activities - Sara Bassanelli, Politecnico di Torino

• International Data Circulation in the Geosciences: The Case of China (1950s–2000s) - Xiaoyue Hu

Session Organizers

• Sara Bassanelli, Politecnico di Torino

• Simone Turchetti, University of Manchester