The BSHS sponsored a conference in Manchester earlier this week for
postgraduates working in the history of science, technology and medicine.
As I'm sure all the participants would agree, the event was extremely
successful. Over the two days, we heard no less than 27 papers from
postgrads working at institutions as far apart as Glasgow and Zurich, and,
perhaps as importantly, had plenty of opportunities for talking informally
and bridging the isolation that some postgrads feel.
However, I know I was not alone in wondering slightly at the potential
implications of the range of the papers presented. History of medicine was
easily the most represented area (11 papers), followed by history of life
sciences (7 papers). With 3 papers, history of computing came above
history of physical sciences, which could lay claim to only 2 papers. We
couldn't help but wonder if the dominance of history of medicine might
have something to do with the availability of funding in that area, and if
so, what's going to happen to the history of physical sciences?
One other trend was obvious from the papers - the most 'ancient' topic of
research presented was C16 Germany. Only two other papers dealt with
anything pre-1840, while about 16 dealt with post-1900. This is partly due
to the preponderance of papers on C20 medical topics, but even among
history of science, the main period of focus was as recent as the late
C19.
Of course, you can argue that the postgrads at the conference may not have
been representative of the state of young researchers in HSTM in general.
But informal conversation about people we knew who hadn't come suggested
that the overal picture wouldn't be so very different.
So how do we encourage more people to consider the large expanse of
history pre-1800?
Aileen Fyfe
***********
Dept. of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Cambridge
Free School Lane (+44 1223) 740 537
Cambridge CB2 3RH [log in to unmask]
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