ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

ESHS Neuenschwander Prize Lecture: From the Margins: Rethinking Power and Perspective in the History of Science, Ana Simões

Session Submission Type: Plenary Session

English Abstract

In this talk, I offer some reflections from the margins on the importance of rethinking power and perspective in the history of science.

I will do so anchored on three ways of looking from the margins: first, geographical – the viewpoint from a European periphery – in which I present some examples drawn from my early career choices in an institutional setting deeply marginalized, or even nonexistent, in the national and international (professional) landscape; second, disciplinary – the involvement on the professionalization of the history of science and technology in Portugal – in which I address questions stemming from my participation in the international network Science and Technology in the European Periphery (STEP), as a way to counteract the fragility of the margins; and third and final, conceptual – stepping on forbidden ground in the hegemonic times of global history, I offer some historiographical reflections illustrated by the metaphor of the fugue (inspired by Bach’s “Art of the Fugue”) to explore a reconceptualization of the role of the margins within the context of global history of science.


My reflections serve as the basis for a reassessment of the history of the 1919 total solar eclipse, the event that confirmed, for the first time, the bending of light predicted by Albert Einstein during World War I, grounded in the findings of the E3GLOBAL project (A global history of the 1919 total solar eclipse, https://e3global.pt), which I headed in previous years.

Sub Unit

• ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Presenter

• Ana Simões, Universidade de Lisboa