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Development of science, technology and medicine in the contemporary age analyzed from different social and cultural perspectives. We analyze the process of circulation of knowledge and practices, their audience, the shaping of expert knowledge, the relationships between professionals and amateurs, scientific controversies, teaching practices, actions to popularize science and scientific spaces and material culture. The topics covered belong to the fields of science, technology and medicine, without assuming any prior definition or hierarchical relation between these areas. The studies combine different type of historical scales, use a great variety of sources (from daily press to court records) and address a large number of characters and settings, from comparative perspective and in the framework of recent international historiography. The specific objectives of the group are:

  • Science and its audience in the contemporary society: analysis of the dissemination of science in Spain, science in daily press, astronomical events in the public sphere, eclipses and comets, inorganic Darwinism, periodic system and cosmology in 19th-century Spain.
  • Science in the classroom from a historical perspective: studies of teaching and learning practices in France and Spain during the 19th and 20th centuries, material culture and school spaces, chemistry manuals in Spain and France during the 18th and 19th century, academic disciplines, examinations, visual culture and problems in Spanish secondary schools, chemical classifications and academic curricula in the 19th century.
  • Science, medicine and law: experts in courts, study of the development of forensic medicine in Spain and France during the 19th and 20th centuries, the creation of communities of forensic experts, poisoning trials in the 19th century in France and Spain, forensic science in early-20th-century Spain.
  • The circulation of knowledge: centers and peripheries, study tours to study chemistry (18th-20th centuries), introduction of chemical and toxicological analysis techniques in Spain.
  • The role of experts in contemporary society: the shaping of expert knowledge: uncertainty, credibility and authority and the development of chemical analysis in 19th- and 20th-century Spain.
  • Scientific terminology from historical perspectives: creation, dissemination and adaptation of neologisms; translation and translators; chemical nomenclature in 19th-century Spain; terminology of poisons in science and the law, and the terminology of chemical analysis.
  • Professionals and amateurs: controversies and synergies, professional scientific institutions and amateur associations and networks, astronomy and astrophysics in 19th- and 20th-century Spain, and geology in 20th-century Chile.
  • Scientific controversies: origin, development, scenarios, actors and end; disputes between experts before Spanish and French courts; controversies surrounding the prediction of earthquakes in Chile and discussions about the properties of mineral waters.
  • The material culture of science: management, conservation and study of scientific and medical heritage; collective databases; instruments producers and the birth of precision industry in Spain; scientific instruments and teaching practices, and collection of scientific instruments in universities and secondary schools.
  • Science, technology and medicine: Physics at the service of life sciences, the development of biophysics, the creation and consolidation of new profesisonal identities, the domestication of new techniques and instruments, electron microscopy in the UK and Spain; chemistry and medicine in 19th-century France, and spas and water analysis: between chemistry, medicine and business.

Members

Name Category Contact E-mail and website
Bertomeu Sánchez, José Ramón
University Lecturer
PhD in Chemical Sciences
Tel. 963926241
Cuenca Lorente, María del Mar
Funded Predoctoral Research, JAE-Predoc, CSIC
A. B. in Pharmacy
Tel. 963926241
Ruiz Castell, Pedro Associate Professor
PhD History of Science
Tel. 963926236
Suay Matallana, Ignacio
Contracted CSIC-Bancaja
Chemical Enginner
Tel. 963926241
Valderas Rosón, Juan Carlos Technician
Tel. 963926257
Valderrama Zenteno, Lorena Beatriz Grant holder Bicentennial System Chile, CONICYT
Lic. in Social Communication
Tel. 963926301