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to Israel Society for History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science
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Greetings Israel Society for History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science,
New items have been posted matching your subscriptions.
Dear colleagues, We would like to remind you that the deadline for submissions to the Annual Meeting of the International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC), to be held 8–11 October 2026 in Alexandroupolis, Greece, is fast approaching. We encourage you to consult the Call for Papers, available on the conference website: https://icohtec2026.hs.duth.gr/
We also wish to draw your attention to recent updates to the ICOHTEC website (https://www.icohtec.org/).
In order to enhance ICOHTEC’s informational support for our community, the News section has been fully updated and redesigned with a clearer layout and improved usability, making it easier to follow the Association’s most recent announcements and developments. When relevant, selected news items will also be featured in dedicated sections for easier access.
In addition, two new sections have been created that may be of particular interest to researchers (especially early-career scholars) working in the history of technology and the history of science and technology: the Calls for Papers and Job Opportunities section.
If you would like to suggest a news item, a call for papers, or an academic job opportunity for inclusion on the website or in the Newsletter, please contact Simone Fari (fa...@ugr.es) or Anna Batzeli (abat...@he.duth.gr).
This issue features a wide range of content, including ICOHTEC news, the current issue of ICON, the Newsletter editorial, blog contributions, and a curated list of recent publications, as well as upcoming calls and events of interest.
Highlights include:
ICOHTEC 2026: The Call for Papers for the 53rd Annual Meeting in Alexandroupolis (Greece), to be held on 8–11 October 2026, along with an interview with the Programme Committee Chair. Deadline approaching: 31 January 2026. More information is available on the conference website: https://icohtec2026.hs.duth.gr/ Please submit your conference abstract via the submission portal: https://abstractsicohtec.com/
Voices from the community: An interview with Martino Davide, recipient of the ICOHTEC Turriano Prize.
I would also like to take this opportunity to share our open call for contributions to the ICOHTEC Newsletter.
The Newsletter welcomes submissions from scholars and practitioners in relevant fields. Contributions may include event announcements, descriptions of ongoing projects, reflections, or other news items of interest. We also invite short blog-style essays (up to 800 words). The aim of the Newsletter is to keep members and affiliates informed about current developments and emerging discussions in the field.
We accept contributions in all official ICOHTEC languages.
Thank you very much.
Best regards, Anna Batzeli Newsletter Editor
ps. If you would like your email address to be added to the Newsletter distribution list, please send an email with the subject line “subscribe” to: abat...@he.duth.gr
Faith Andrews Fellowships for the study of Shaker life and material culture
William Seale Fellowship for research related to architectural, landscape and gardens, and White House/Presidential history
Ephemera Society of America—Winterthur Fellowship for research by emerging scholars in Winterthur's extensive ephemera collections with an added opportunity for presentation or publishing through the ESA
Conservation Research Fellowship for research related to conservation and technical studies
Maker-Creator Fellowship for artistic and creative professionals to examine, study, and immerse themselves in Winterthur’s vast collections to inspire their practices
Time at Winterthur offers fellows unparalleled access to an independent research library and museum whose collections encourage understanding and appreciation of the cultural, artistic, social, and intellectual history of the Americas in a global context from the 17th to the 20th centuries, complemented by conservation and analytical science labs, and extensive gardens situated in 1,000 acres of preserved meadows and farmland. Two renovated residences at Winterthur offer researchers accommodations within the estate’s serene surroundings. Fellows will enjoy newly renovated office space, 24-7 access to the circulating library collections and reading room, and the opportunity to participate in a variety of programs in a thriving intellectual community that supports two graduate-level programs in art conservation and American material culture at the University of Delaware.
The 2026 Curt C. and Else Silberman Faculty Seminar explores resistance acts during the Holocaust with a focus on protest, hiding, and rescue. Together, we will examine the different forms of Jews’ resistance to Nazi antisemitic policies, as well as assistance that Jews and non-Jews (or “mixed” categories) provided to Jews, who found hiding places, lived under false identities, and escaped the Nazis during the Holocaust. In addition to discussing individual acts of resistance, we will investigate the ways in which Jewish and non-Jewish men and women were associated with or participated in resistance groups and networks. With the goal of teaching this content, we will consider why Jewish resistance during the Holocaust is still often perceived as a rare occurrence, and how gender stereotypes led to a restricted or distorted view of Jewish and non-Jewish resistance. We will also examine the following topics:
varieties of Jewish resistance, including hiding, passing, and escaping, etc.
comparative research of rescue across Europe during the Holocaust
the contexts and methods of Jews' and non-Jews' resistance
the consequences and moral implications of rescue actions
Jewish and non-Jewish forms of cooperation
the politics of commemorating resisters and rescuers, etc.
The 2026 Silberman Seminar helps faculty, instructors, and advanced PhD students who are currently teaching or preparing to teach courses that focus on or have a curricular component related to the Holocaust. Applications are welcome from instructors across academic disciplines, including but not limited to Anthropology, Archeology, Art, Disability Studies, Gender Studies, German Studies, History, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Jewish Studies, Human Rights, Migration Studies, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Political Science and International Relations, Psychology, Refugee Studies, Sociology, and Trauma and Memory Studies. The seminar aims to deepen, broaden, and enrich how we teach the Holocaust by drawing on a range of perspectives and disciplinary approaches to address different forms of Jews’ resistance to the Holocaust.
The deadline for applications is Sunday, March 15, 2026. This seminar will take place June 1–10, 2026 at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Seminar applicants must be teaching or anticipate teaching relevant courses at accredited institutions in North America. The full CfA and the application form are available here on the USHMM website. Please contact Campus Outreach Programs (campusoutre...@ushmm.org) with any questions.
The Curt C. and Else Silberman Foundation endowed the Silberman Seminar for University Faculty in memory of Curt C. and Else Silberman. The Foundation supports programs in higher education that promote, protect, and strengthen Jewish values in democracy, human rights, ethical leadership, and cultural pluralism.
Generate: Prompting the New in the Medical and Health Humanities
An online symposium organised by the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Health Hub
Monday 11th and Tuesday 12th May 2026
Call for Papers
We invite proposals for papers, panels, and creative/critical interventions for an online symposium ‘Generate: Prompting the New in the Medical and Health Humanities’. The symposium seeks to explore how notions of generation—creative, biological, technological, political, and epistemic—are reshaping the medical humanities at a moment of rapid transformation in health, medicine, and society.
To generate is to bring forth new forms of knowledge, new bodies, new relations, new futures. In clinical practice, research cultures and patient experience, the term ‘generation’ evokes a wide range of processes, from biological reproduction to the emergence of life-sustaining technologies, generational identities and disparities, the production of narratives that anchor meaning in illness and care, ways of thinking and living beyond normative assumptions about bodies and health, and AI-mediated practices that increasingly shape our understandings of health and care.
This conference asks:
What does it mean to generate—or to be generated—within medical practice, discourse, or culture?
How have histories of medicine shaped the conditions for what is considered generative, innovative, or possible today?
How do new technologies prompt new ethical, epistemic, and aesthetic understandings or forms?
What responsibilities arise as medical humanities engages with practices that create, imagine, or simulate the ‘new’?
We welcome papers and creative interventions that examine how generative processes—material, metaphorical, or methodological—unsettle established narratives and open emergent modes of inquiry in the medical humanities.
Topics may include but are not limited to:
Histories and futures of innovation in medicine: invention, discovery, and the politics of the ‘new’
Generational identities and inheritances in health and healthcare
Regeneration: the place of the medical humanities in regenerative medicine and regenerative approaches to the environment, such as ‘rewilding’
Degeneration: discourses of decline in healthcare systems and human societies
Ethical and philosophical inquiries into creation, novelty, intervention, or transformation
Narratives of reproduction, fertility, birthing and intergenerational care
Disability, chronic illness, and the generative potential of lived experience
AI and machine learning in clinical and cultural contexts
Generative metaphors and epistemologies in discourses and representations of health
Creative, artistic, or experimental methods that generate alternative forms of knowledge
The imaginative generation of future health worlds and spaces
The role of the medical humanities in generating public engagement, activism, or policy
We invite submissions for:
Individual Papers (10 minutes)
Panels (3 x 10-minute papers)
Creative/Artistic or Multimedia Contributions (readings, visual media, etc.)
Flash workshops (30 minutes)
Please submit an abstract of 200 words, with a brief biographical note (100 words), to fhasshe...@lancaster.ac.ukby Friday 20th March 2026.
Panel proposals should include a 100-word overview of the session and individual abstracts and bios for each participant.
Applicants will be notified of acceptance by Friday 10th April 2026.
Organizing Committee:
Professor Charlotte Baker, Languages and Global Cultures, School of Global Affairs
Dr Ben Dalton, Languages and Global Cultures, School of Global Affairs
Dr Sara Wasson, English, School of Arts
Dr Alex Wragge-Morley, History, School of Global Affairs
Dr Steph Wright, History, School of Global Affairs
Postgraduate reps: Finty Royle and Darcy McDonnell, MA Global Medical and Health Humanities
Space, Place, and Patients 2nd Annual Virtual Conference for Graduate Students and Early Career Researchers February 19-21, 2026, via Zoom
The American Association for the History of Nursing (AAHN) invites submissions for a virtual conference on space, place, and patients from senior undergraduate students, graduate students, and early career researchers (defined as up to 5 years post-PhD).
Submissions that consider nurses or the role of the nursing profession in these issues are welcomed. However, presentations can consider any aspect of healthcare history within any geographic or temporal frame.
You do not need to be an AAHN member to submit an abstract, but accepted presenters must be (or become) members to present at the conference. We offer a special membership discount for students: two students from the same institution can become members for $100 USD. More information on AAHN membership and membership benefits can be found here.
Presenters will have 20 minutes to deliver their paper, followed by a 10-minute question and answer period.
Research travel grants of up to $1,500 are offered by the following Centers, subject areas, and collection holdings:
Archive of Documentary Arts General Grant
Archive of Documentary Arts Sidney Gamble Travel Grant
Doris Duke Foundation Travel Grant
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Travel Grant
Harry H. Harkins, Jr. T’73 Travel Grant
History of Medicine Collections
Human Rights Archive
John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History
John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History
Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture (Mary Lily Research Grants)
Projects must align with the guidelines for selected travel grant(s) regarding topic and collection usage. We encourage applications from students at any level of education; faculty and teachers; visual and performing artists; writers; filmmakers; public historians; and independent researchers. Applicants must reside beyond a 100-mile radius of Durham, N.C., and may not be current Duke students or employees. Awards are paid as reimbursement after completion of the research visit(s).
Deadline: Applications will be accepted through Friday, February 27, 2026, 8:00 PM EST. Recipients will be notified of decisions during the week of April 13, 2026. Grants will be awarded for travel during May 2026 – June 2027.
An online information session will be held Wednesday, January 14, 2026, 2-3 pm EST. This program will review application requirements, offer tips for creating a successful application, and include an opportunity for attendees to ask questions. This information session will be recorded and posted online afterwards. You can register for the session here.
For assistance determining the eligibility of your project, please contact As...@duke.edu with the subject line “Travel Grants.”
Contact Information
Rachel Ingold
Curator, History of Medicine Collections
David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Dear colleagues, We would like to remind you that the deadline for submissions to the Annual Meeting of the International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC), to be held 8–11 October 2026 in Alexandroupolis, Greece, is fast approaching. We encourage you to consult the Call for Papers, available on the conference website: https://icohtec2026.hs.duth.gr/
We also wish to draw your attention to recent updates to the ICOHTEC website (https://www.icohtec.org/).
In order to enhance ICOHTEC’s informational support for our community, the News section has been fully updated and redesigned with a clearer layout and improved usability, making it easier to follow the Association’s most recent announcements and developments. When relevant, selected news items will also be featured in dedicated sections for easier access.
In addition, two new sections have been created that may be of particular interest to researchers (especially early-career scholars) working in the history of technology and the history of science and technology: the Calls for Papers and Job Opportunities section.
If you would like to suggest a news item, a call for papers, or an academic job opportunity for inclusion on the website or in the Newsletter, please contact Simone Fari (fa...@ugr.es) or Anna Batzeli (abat...@he.duth.gr).
The French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) is inviting applications for one fully funded PhD Fellowship under the international research project PRODERE – The Promises and Delusions of Private Ecosystem Restoration in India. 🔎 PhD Topic Private Ecosystem Restoration, Governance, and Local Livelihoods in South India This PhD offers the opportunity to conduct in-depth field-based social science research on private ecosystem restoration initiatives and their impacts on governance, environmental justice, and local livelihoods across Tamil Nadu (Pandalgudi, Sirumalai, Masinagudi). 🎓 Fellowship Highlights 4-year fully funded PhD Stipend up to INR 42,000 + HRA/month Based at IFP, India, in collaboration with PALOC (France) Strong interdisciplinary and international research environment 👤 Ideal Candidate Master’s in Social Sciences (Anthropology, Sociology, Political Ecology, Human Geography, Development Studies, etc.) Strong interest in environmental governance and qualitative fieldwork Fluency in English and Tamil required 📅 Apply by: 30 January 2026 📧 Send CV, cover letter, and writing sample (English & Tamil) to thamara...@ifpindia.org and sarah....@ird.fr
Deadline for Abstract Submission: Monday, 19 January 2026
Theme: Matriculture: From Concept to Application (OPEN CALL)
Broadly understood, matriculture is a Geertzian cultural framework of symbols and meanings pertaining to women.
As a concept and methodology with tremendous potential for moving forward, though, matriculture deserves a deeper exploration. The community of scholars working closely with the term has developed the following understanding:
The term ‘matriculture’ refers to the system of symbols which in any society pertains to women, the maternal, and the feminine. This system of symbols (this matriculture) creates a shared 'language,' so to speak, to describe, interpret, and reflect social reality - a model of reality - as well as prescribing and shaping social behaviour - a model for reality.
The concept as it is used here was developed by Marie-Francoise Guédon and is based on Clifford Geertz' cultural systems theory. Any given society can be studied through the lens of its matriculture, which places the lived experience of women and their associated economic, emotional, cultural, and political roles at the centre of the analysis. While women’s lives are central to the concept, it gains its power due to its pervasive presence throughout a culture. The system of symbols as a model of and for reality positions women in flourishing or diminishing social and political roles; what the system also associates with women is consequently perceived as increasing or diminishing in return.
Guédon's concept of matriculture does not replace specific descriptions such as matrilineal, matriarchal, or matrifocal; it does not describe a particular feature of a society, but is intended as a research tool. That is, as a conceptual framework according to which a scholar can examine and compare the body of symbols, meanings, and social relationships pertaining to women from a range of societies. In this use of the term, no society is described as a matriculture, but – like religion or artwork - every society possesses a cultural system pertaining to women that we call matriculture.
For this issue of Matrix, we invite contributions that explore the concept’s application to any culture or society worldwide and throughout history; we are casting the net wide open, looking to clarify and deepen understanding of the concept and broaden its application. How would this concept illuminate your work? Drawing on insights from ethnology, history, anthropology, Indigenous studies, legal studies, religious studies, linguistics, and creative arts, among others, we welcome contributions from scholars, community members, public servants, non-government organizations, Indigenous organizations, artists, and practitioners.
We strongly encourage creative artworks of any media and personal reflections on this theme. Potential research topics may include the following, but don’t be limited by our imaginations!
Women’s roles in practicing science, medicine, or technology; for example, how has research into women's healthcare changed since 1975 and how are these changes portrayed in the literature? Or, what impact is Martha Root having on hacktivism? Or, a brief biography of a woman scientist.
Women in the governance, community decision-making, and legal traditions of science, medicine, or technology; for example, how well or poorly represented are women in an institution's decision to close its account on X (formerly Twitter)? Or, how are legal traditions concerning reproductive health influencing women's health & well-being across different polities and how do these differing legal traditions represent women?
The impacts of developments in science, medicine, or technology on a society's matriculture
Ethnographic, ethnohistorical, and biographical accounts of women’s lived experiences in science, medicine, or technology
Myths, legends, and oral histories in science, medicine, or technology that reflect or resist matricultural paradigms
Creative expressions – artworks, literary pieces, reflections, videos – exploring women’s experiences in science, medicine, or technology
Submission via email to: Please submit a 200-word abstract (max) and a 50-word biography to Linnéa Rowlatt, Managing Editor, at lrow...@networkonculture.ca, or to the Editorial Collective of Matrix: A Journal for Matricultural Studies at in...@networkonculture.ca with the Subject line ‘Matrix Vol. 5(2) Abstract Submission.’
Deadline for Abstract Submission: Monday, 19 January 2026
About Matrix
Matrix: A Journal for Matricultural Studies is an open access, peer-reviewed and refereed journal published by the International Network for Training, Education, and Research on Culture (Network on Culture), Canada. Matrix is published online through the Open Journal System twice per year (spring and autumn) and distributed through Érudit, the Directory of Open Access Journals, and Feminist Periodicals.
For many years, scholarship has explored the expression and role of women in culture from various perspectives such as kinship, economics, ritual, etc, but so far, the idea of approaching culture as a whole, taking the female world as primary, as a cultural system in Geertz’ classical sense of the term – a matriculture – has gone unnoticed. Some cultures have a weakly defined matricultural system; others have strong matricultural systems with various ramifications that may include, but are not limited to, matrilineal kinship, matrilocality, matriarchal governance features – all of which have serious consequences relative to the socio-cultural status of women, men, children, and the entire community of humans, animals, and the environment.
The main objective of Matrix is to provide a forum for those who are working from this theoretical stance. We encourage submissions from scholars, community members, and other knowledge keepers from around the world who are ready to take a new look at the ways in which people - women and men, historically and currently - have organized themselves into meaningful relationships; the myths, customs, and laws which support these relationships; and the ways in which researchers have documented and perhaps mis-labeled the matricultures they encounter.
Grace, Peter C.. The Intelligence Intellectuals: Social Scientists and the Making of the CIA. : Geogetown University Press, 2026. xviii + 288 pp. $39.95 (paper), ISBN 9781647126445.
Reviewed by
Joy Rohde (University of Michigan) Published on
H-Sci-Med-Tech (January, 2026) Commissioned by
Penelope K. Hardy (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse)
The Intelligence Intellectuals: Social Scientists and the Making of the CIA is a detailed study of the early years of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), from its crisis of identity and reputation after its creation in 1946 to its resuscitation via the social sciences between 1950 and 1953. Histories of the social sciences at the CIA typically gloss over the agency’s first years, creating the misimpression it immediately adopted social science methods developed by its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), during World War II. Peter C. Grace corrects the record. TheIntelligence Intellectuals opens with the new CIA flailing precisely because its leaders ignored the war’s lessons.
Grace’s account begins from the premise that the CIA would not be able to fulfill its intelligence mission—the creation of long-range, high-level strategic intelligence products that included reliable estimates of future global developments—until it incorporated the social sciences. While there was no blueprint for this new intelligence product, which Grace terms “strategic peacetime intelligence” to differentiate it from military intelligence, the wartime OSS offered a useful precedent. Its Research and Analysis Branch, nicknamed the “chairborne division,” boasted a staff of renowned social scientists who produced thousands of strategically relevant reports. “Social science had proven itself during World War II,” Grace explains. Adopting it would give the CIA “immediate legitimacy and effectiveness” (p. 5).
Why didn’t the CIA’s early leadership do so? The book’s early chapters provide compelling arguments: Agency leaders misunderstood or ignored the demand for strategic intelligence. Instead, analysts churned out background studies, political reports, and current intelligence of dubious quality and little utility. Leadership also failed to advocate for the new agency amid turf battles with the Pentagon, the military services’ intelligence offices, and the State Department. This produced embarrassing results, including the CIA’s failure to provide an accurate estimate of Soviet atomic capability.
Things turned around in 1950, when General Walter Bedell Smith took the helm. According to Grace, Smith made two decisive moves. He prioritized the production of high-level, long-range intelligence estimates and hired former OSS researchers to oversee their creation. Once their reporting improved, Smith then made the rounds in Washington. As Dwight D. Eisenhower’s right-hand man during World War II, he used his connections to forge positive relationships between CIA and the president, the secretary of defense, and military intelligence agencies. Indeed, one of the key lessons of Grace’s book is the role of well-connected leadership and organizational acumen in the development of new government functions.
The book’s second half follows Smith’s “intelligence intellectuals,” men with Ivy League credentials who were adept at bending their academic skills to the interdisciplinary, applied demands of intelligence analysis. Grace’s account centers on three protagonists. Chairborne division veteran and Harvard historian William Langer oversaw the creation of the new Office of National Estimates, home to CIA’s long-range intelligence analysis. Langer brought on allies from wartime social science projects, including Yale diplomatic historian and fellow OSS researcher Sherman Kent and MIT economist Max Millikan.
Grace offers a lively account of Millikan’s work developing the tools to produce what became CIA’s sought-after analyses of Soviet economic and military resources. But Kent is the real hero of the story. Grace argues that Kent’s adaptation of historical and social science research methods into CIA research imbued the agency’s National Intelligence Estimates—its most important product—with the “scientific method” required for success (p. 143). Kent’s systematic, interdisciplinary approach produced the encyclopedic picture of national capabilities necessary to produce accurate intelligence estimates. In just a few years, he birthed the discipline of strategic intelligence and helped establish the CIA’s reputation.
Historians interested in intelligence expertise will find rich details regarding the intellectual and organizational development of strategic intelligence and the central roles that Smith, Langer, Kent, and Millikan played in it. Grace’s source base includes over 150 declassified CIA documents painstakingly excavated from archival records, and his careful analysis of them provides a comprehensive portrait of early CIA products and practices.
Historians of science, however, will find Grace’s account out of step with the history of the social sciences in the postwar United States. With few exceptions, Grace does not engage the booming literature in the field. His argument is rooted in the problematic claim that social science was an authoritative form of knowledge—practically on par with the physical sciences—in Washington. Historians interested in whether, how, and to what extent the social sciences attained political legitimacy in intelligence analysis will not find the answers in The Intelligence Intellectuals.
Historians of science might also question what exactly was social scientific about CIA methodology in the early 1950s. Grace’s actors appear to use the term analysis far more frequently than social science to describe their methods and products. Social science seems the author’s catchall term for history, area studies, geography, political science, economics, and more, rather than an actors’ category. This imposition of methodological unity leads Grace away from the questions historians of science might ask: How did disagreements within and among disciplines manifest in intelligence estimates and battles over their legitimacy? Which disciplines dominated, where, when, and why? Historians interested in the role of ideology in foreign policy expertise, too, will not find reflections on ongoing debates about the Cold War’s ideological influence on policy knowledge. Grace also does not engage ongoing debates about the relationship between social science and American power that have animated the history of the social sciences and the history of foreign policy in recent years.
To be fair, however, Grace does not claim his text is a contribution to the history of social science. Rather, his primary readership is historians of intelligence. In that regard, Grace performs a stellar service, providing fresh primary sources that illuminate the early years of the CIA and making a strong case that “intelligence intellectuals” were critical players in the creation of CIA intelligence products, and the resuscitation of the organization, in its early years.
Citation:
Joy Rohde.
Review of
Grace, Peter C..
The Intelligence Intellectuals: Social Scientists and the Making of the CIA.
H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews.
January, 2026. URL:
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=62574
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