H-Sci-Med-Tech: New posted content
Nations and Nationalism in Science and Technology [Announcement]
ON
Canada
The Canadian Science and Technology Historical Association (CSTHA-AHSTC) invites proposals for its biennial meeting, to be held at York University, 7–9 November 2025.
We encourage scholarship that engages broadly with the topics of nations and nationalism as they relate to scientific and technological change. These are classic questions for Canadian historians of science and technology, but also timely ones in the current era of profound, rapid, and unpredictable global change.
Proposed topics include but are not limited to the following:
- Where and when have Indigenous knowledges or practices intersected or interacted with colonial scientific or technological ones?
- What roles have political or geographic borders played in the development of science and technology in Canada, nationally, internationally, or provincially?
- How have different sciences and technologies interacted with the way Canadians have understood and aligned themselves with their national or regional identities, or matters of sovereignty?
- How have external international policies or institutions encouraged or discouraged Canadian scientific or technological activities or practices?
- What new lessons can be drawn from past scientific or technological rhetoric within Canada especially those related to protectionist, free-trade policies, or “nation-building” enterprises?
The Program Committee welcomes presentations addressing a broad range of areas related to the history of Canadian science and technology, including research, teaching, curation, and research-creation, describing in-progress or completed projects.
We invite participants to propose alternative, innovative, and experimental session formats, including workshops, activity-based experiences, and presentations of creative works, such as visual essays, photography, poetry, or sound-and-image projects.
The Program Committee welcomes proposals of several types:
- Individual papers: proposals must include a title, an abstract (up to 250 words), a list of 3-5 keywords, as well as the author’s name, email, and brief bio (no more than 50 words). The program committee will organize individual papers into thematically related sessions composed of three 20-minute presentations or four 15-minute presentations.
- Traditional sessions or panels: proposals should include the session title and abstract (up to 350 words), names of participation authors, and a list of 3-5 keywords, as well as abstracts for each of the proposed session papers, which include the title of proposed paper (up to 250 words), author’s name, email, and a brief author bio (no more than
50 words). - Alternative sessions: please feel free to contact the Program Committee.
Proposals for in-person and virtual presentations will be considered. Please indicate your preference on your proposal.
CSTHA accepts proposals for papers or panels in French and English, as well as those which include components in other languages. Similarly, CSTHA welcomes proposals from scholars and researchers of all ranks and constituencies, working in traditional domains of history as well
as adjacent fields.
Selected conference contributors will be encouraged to publish their work in a future issue of the CSTHA journal, Scientia Canadensis.
Travel grants
The CSTHA welcomes the participation of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows at the conference. A limited number of travel grants will be available. Information about eligibility and how to apply will be posted to the CSTHA website soon.
Graduate Student Artefacts Workshop, 7 November 2025
The CSTHA will host a workshop for graduate students interested in material culture approaches to the study of technological and scientific artefacts and objects. The workshop will be held on 9:00 – 13:00 on Friday 7 November. Lunch will be served.
CSTHA Student Writing Workshop, Spring 2026
Students presenting at the 2025 CSTHA Biannual Conference are encouraged to participate in CSTHA’s student writing workshop in Spring 2026. The workshop offers students the opportunity to develop conference presentations into publishable works, such as journal articles, blog posts, or commentaries. Please indicate your interest in participating in the 2026 Student Writing Workshop in your response to this CFP. Workshop organizers will contact interested students with more information about the workshop prior to the 2025 Conference.
For more information please contact Megan Krempa at the Canadian Science and Technology Historical Association at the email address below.
Mario Biagioli
Posting this on behalf of my colleague, Ian Burney:
With profound sadness I write to inform colleagues that Mario Biagioli passed away on the 18th of May, following brain cancer surgery. Mario lived as he thought – with clarity, flair, and courage. His contributions to the field are many and profound. To his friends, he was an inexhaustible source of fun and kindness. Those who read him, and those who knew him, will never forget him.
Details of memorial arrangements will be circulated when the information is available.
EVENT: Fair Play and Technological Innovation in Sports (June 16) [Announcement]
DC
United States
Fair Play and Technological Innovation in Sports
June 16, 2025
4:00pm–6:30pm ET, reception follows
Hybrid event: Attend in-person or online
Location: New America – 740 15th St NW, Washington, DC 20005, Suite 900.
FREE Registration: https://events.newamerica.org/fairplayandtechnologicalinnova
From advanced helmets and high-performance footwear to precision tracking systems and adaptive equipment, technology is rapidly transforming both competitive and recreational sports. New innovations promise to enhance competition, safety, accuracy, and participation—but they also raise difficult questions about fairness, tradition, and the rules of the game.
To mark the launch of their new book Inventing for Sports, Arthur Daemmrich and Eric Hintz will explore the challenges and opportunities of managing disruptive sports technologies. Next, a panel of leading innovators—including Jinger Gottschall from New Balance and Jason Nebauer from Certor Sports, the company behind the groundbreaking VICIS helmet—will share how they develop and test cutting-edge gear, and what’s next for the future of play.
Presented by New America’s Future Tense, the ASU Great Game Lab, ASU’s Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, and the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, this program will also consider how lessons from sports can inform broader policy debates around emerging technologies.
Opening Talks
- Arthur Daemmrich – Director, ASU Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes
- Eric Hintz – Acting Director, Smithsonian Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation
Panel Discussion
- Jinger Gottschall – Director of Sports Research, New Balance
- Jason Neubauer – Chief Innovation Officer, Certor Sports
- Moderator: Victoria Jackson – Sports Historian and Co-Director, ASU Great Game Lab
Please register and attend!
Trans-hemispheric Seminar on Race and the History of Technology [Announcement]
BA
Brazil
Call for Participants
Salvador and Cachoeira, Bahia (Brazil)
November 9-15, 2025
We invite applications from early-career scholars to attend a five-day, in-person seminar at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) and Federal University do Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB), co-hosted with the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), the Brazilian Society of History of Science (SBHC), the Brazilian National Science and Technology Institute (INCT) Science and Democracy, the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto, and the Department of History at Drexel University in Philadelphia. For this event, doctoral students, post-doctoral fellows, pre-tenure and non-tenure-track instructors, and early-career independent scholars will convene in a trans-hemispheric conversation on Race and the History of Technology (HoT).
As we write this, historiographies dominating the field of HoT remain beholden to customary European and U.S. constructions of race. That is: Historical inquiry on technology depends heavily on a sense of naturalized human differences that has supported the hegemonic role of the global North in modern history. That privilege has in turn directed what shall count as significant objects of inquiry in HoT or what counts as historical evidence. These determinations are inseparable from prevailing judgements regarding from whom, and from where, legitimate historical study may arise, and we seek to braid all these conditions in our critical interrogation.
While ideas of what shall count historically as technologies have lately expanded to include concepts, skills, ideologies, and forms of governance alongside material artifacts, the field has yet to engage with a more reflexive, critical address of sociabilities of race. To challenge these dominating epistemics we envision a meeting of young scholars to discuss historiographies of race from the Americas, Africa, Middle East, South Asia, and the Pacific. In tandem with epistemic critique, the group will address material relations of academic labor, an inquiry supported by the location in the Recôncavo da Bahia, a region with distinctively strong intellectual and political traditions engaging race.
The conversation will produce a set of articles (by single authors or co-authored) to be submitted to History and Technology, História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos, or Revista Brasileira de História da Ciência. The journals’ editors will attend the seminar and offer ongoing support for the development of manuscripts for submission.
We seek participation from those working in institutions in all global regions and we will fund, as a function of need, transport and accommodation, and meals. In light of the transhemispheric aims of the project, the meeting will be held in English but resulting publications may be in English, Portuguese, or Spanish.
To apply: Please send a short CV [up to 1 page] and a brief statement of your interest in attending this seminar [up to 500 words] as a single attachment, by email to trans...@gmail.comby June 30, 2025. Statements should address at least one of the following questions:
- How do you frame the relation between race and technology in your research?
- Consider the terms of debate currently surrounding race and the history of technology that support institutional and disciplinary hierarchies; how might we challenge and change these frameworks?
- Periodization, causality, geographies, and other “tools of the historical trade” are not yet well interrogated through the lenses of race-making; how does your own research approach these or other such tools?
Please contact trans...@gmail.com with any questions.
Organizing Collective: Amy Slaton (Drexel University), Climério Silva Neto (UFBA), Edward Jones-Imhotep (University of Toronto), Fernanda Braga (UFRB), Gabriel da Costa Ávila (UFRB), Maria Renilda Barreto (SBHC), Tiago Saraiva (Drexel University).
History of nursing, refugees and prison health events (online and London) [Announcement]
United Kingdom
Upcoming history of nursing events
RCN Annual History of Nursing Lecture (in person)
Jewish refugees and their nursing lives in the Second World War
Thursday 5 June 2025, 5.30pm
RCN Library and Museum, 20 Cavendish Square, London, W1G 0RN
Book online here: History of Nursing Lecture: Jewish refugees and their nursing lives in WW2 | Royal College of Nursing
Following the fall of France, all those Jewish women who had fled Nazi oppression and sought work as nurses in Britain, were dismissed from their hospital positions. Fears of fifth columnists and a lack of understanding of the position of Jewish refugees led to increasingly draconian measures against them, culminating in the internment of some on the Isle of Man.
The Annual RCN History of Nursing Forum lecture by Dr Jane Brooks explores the experiences and feelings of refugee nurses. They were designated ‘enemy aliens’, dismissed and interned, only to be invited back into nursing a few months later. Brooks exposes the opportunism of the Government and nursing profession as more nurses were needed to care for the sick and injured and the refugees' growing sense of worth as they supported the Allied war effort against the Nazis. She considers the young women’s nursing wartime work, as they re-evaluated their lives from victims of a murderous regime to valued members of a vital war-time profession.
Doors open at 5.30pm (refreshments provided) and the lecture starts at 6pm. This event is in person and open to all.
Care in Custody: From police matrons to forensics (online event)
Wednesday 18 June 2025, 6pm
Book online here: Care in Custody: From police matrons to forensics | Royal College of Nursing
The first women to work in police custody services included so-called ‘police matrons’. While not all trained nurses, it indicates the complexity of healthcare work in police settings. Indeed, Edith Smith and Emily Miller, the first policewomen to be appointed in England and Scotland, respectively, in 1915, were both trained nurses.
In this online talk, Louise Jackson outlines the history of these nurses (and others) in the police service, while Gethin Rees explains the recent development of a nursing role in forensics and Karen Swinson explores the introduction of custody nursing from 1999.
The History of Art in Prisons (in person)
Thursday 10 July 2025, 6pm
RCN Library and Museum, 20 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0RN
Book here: The History of Art in Prisons | Royal College of Nursing
In the Victorian era, there was a keen interest in art in secure settings. Art was supposed to evoke a domestic atmosphere, as well as aiming to improve minds and morals. But it could also be a way for prisoners to have a voice – through graffiti, or handcrafted objects.
This event offers an opportunity to see two exhibitions on art and nursing, and brings together speakers on the history of art in prisons, alongside contemporary exhibitions on prisoner art. Speakers include Laura McAtackney on the history of graffiti and other art in Irish prisons and Dominique Moran, who curated the exhibition ‘Incarcerated: Contemporary Arts from the Victorian Prison’.
The Art of Nursing: Creativity, Resistance, Renewal (online)
Wednesday 16 July, 1-2pm
Book here: The Art of Nursing: Creativity, Resistance, Renewal (online)| Event | Royal College of Nursing
The sixth Art of Nursing Webinar, in partnership with Foundation of Nursing Studies, celebrates the launch of a new exhibition at the RCN.
The RCN Library and Museum's new major exhibition presents art by and about nurses - revealing how they have been mythologised, frequently as saints, angels and heroes, usually as female, predominantly as white. It explores the role of art in constructing and also resisting such stereotypes, by exposing the complexity, labour and expertise of nursing, perhaps the most artful of professions.
This webinar explores the exhibition themes of creativity, resistance and renewal in more depth.
Sarah Chaney (she/her)
Events & Exhibitions Manager (Wed – Fri)
Library and Museum
Royal College of Nursing, 20 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0RN
Sarah Chaney
RCN Library and Museum
0345 337 3368
The 