news

A reading group/PhD course with the title “Towards a New Materialism? Exploring Artifactuality and Material Culture in History of Science, Technology and Medicine”, is starting next month in Copenhagen and Lund. The seminar is arranged by the History of Technology Division at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Medical Museion at the University of Copenhagen, […]

Phoenix Arts Association have been awarded a grant from The Wellcome Trust for artist Anna Dumitriu to work on a project about allergy entitled “Sensitive”: “The project is transdisciplinary and crosses the boundary between art and science enabling a greater understanding of allergy through scientific research and innovative art techniques (such as live art, video […]

The former DK-UK Postgraduate Network on Bio-studies has merged with something called PLSSG (Postgraduate Life Sciences and Society Group). This way, they say, “we can initiate local subgroups and arrangements as well as explore comparative and transnational trends”. So far the network is mainly limited to members in Denmark and the UK, but hopefully others […]

The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London has taken an interesting and unusual initiative when creating a job for an ‘outreach historian’ (see the announcement here and below). The only problem is that the position (as judged by the announcement) does not seem to involve any requirement to do […]

The NSU Press is planning to publish an anthology about “Things” — not about “things” in general, but about “the pursuit of filtering away human experience from the thing — possibly to give it back to the world, or to let it speak for itself”, or, in other words, “all attempts at omitting human experience […]

The current issue of leading U.S. weekly newspaper The Onion carries a groundbreaking feature article on the upcoming season for transplant organ harvest

A forthcoming symposium — “The making up of organisms: Mapping the future of biological models and theories”, which will be held 8-10 June 2006 at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris — illustrates the fascinating possibilities for mobilising the history, philosophy and social studies of biology and medicine for more future-oriented studies and as a […]

If you are in London on Thursday 25 May, you’re invited to attend my talk at the South Kensington Institute for the history of Technology (which is a collaborative enterprise of the Science Museum and the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Imperial College), titled “Microarray Technology and Regimes of Biopower: a […]

Remember Ivan Illich, the heckler of modern institutions? He was quite well-known in the 1970’s and 1980’s for his severe criticism of modern education (Deschooling society, 1971), and for his analysis of the problems of the medical institutions, especially the hospital system. In Medical Nemesis (1976) he suggested that the greatest threat to human health […]

Ingemar Nilsson og Margareta Hallberg, Institutionen för idéhistoria och vetenskapsteori, Göteborgs Universitet (Institutionen för idéhistoria och vetenskapsteori, Göteborgs Universitet) planlægger en konference på temaet “Samtidshistorisk medicinhistoria” mandag den 23. oktober 2006. De vil have forslag til præsentationer senest den 31. august (titel + kort abstract). Sendes til ingemar.nilsson@hum.gu.se (Nærmere detaljer kommer nok på dette website […]

There are still a few vacant seats around the table at the Copenhagen station of the Max Planck Research Network’s European Wandering Seminar, “History of Scientific Objects”, 8 – 12 May. Remaining seats will be distributed according the first-come-first-seated principle. PhD students will have priority. Participation fee is 300 DKK per day (including coffee and […]

Apropos our own small but rich exhibition about sex and society: a museum of abortion and contraception (Museum für Verhütung und Schwangerschaftsabbruch) is opening in Vienna, Austria in May. Read more about it on this website in German, or on Jim Edmonson’s website. A test version of their website can be found here.