International Conference of the Historyof Science, Technology & Medicine
24th International Conference

22 - 28 July 2013
University of Manchester

The theme of the 24th Congress is ‘Knowledge at work’. We construe this theme broadly, and encourage studies of the creation, dissemination and deployment of knowledge and practice across all periods, and from a variety of methodological and historiographical approaches. Possible areas of investigation may include, but are not limited to

• case studies of knowledge-making and knowledge-use in particular scientific, technological and medical communities
• the use and adaptation of scientific knowledge in the workplace, the home, and the wider world
• how facts, and other knowledge-claims, travel between disciplines, countries and communities
• relationships between those knowledge-making enterprises which are described as ‘science’ and those which are not, and the dynamics of the boundaries between them
• definitions and meanings of ‘pure’, ‘fundamental’ and ‘applied’ research
• how scientists, engineers and healthcare professionals (and their historical antecedents) work, and whom they work for
• the status relations of knowledge and work, including the roles of 'artists’, ‘artisans’, ‘professionals’, ‘amateurs’, ‘devotees’, ‘operatives’, ‘philosophers’, ‘adepts’, ‘scientists’ and ‘workers’
• sites and geographies of knowledge-production and knowledge-exchange: laboratory, field, factory, hospital, ocean...
• communication about science: forms and genres, advocacy and dissent, authorship and audience in print, manuscript, broadcasting, digital media and performance