Call for Papers: Virtual Conference

HIDDEN HISTORIES: WOMEN AND SCIENCE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Organizers:

Dr Amelia Bonea (University of Heidelberg) & Dr Irina Nastasă-Matei (University of Bucharest)

7-8 May 2021

Submission deadline: 15 January 2021

The twentieth century has often been hailed as a period when women became important in science, but their participation in scientific inquiry and practice often remains buried, quite literally, in the footnotes of specialist publications and studies of the history of science. Even today, national statistics about women in science are not always easily available. The data that does exist suggests there is significant regional and cultural variation in how women engage with science globally. Recent UNESCO surveys, for example, point to a contrast between the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, where almost half of the researchers employed in science are female, and East, South and West Asia, where that proportion drops significantly to 23 percent or less. Similarly, in Eastern European countries female researchers tend to be better represented in science fields than their Western European counterparts. Perhaps ironically, that relationship is reversed when we turn our attention to studies of the history of science in the twentieth century: the scientific pursuits of women in Western contexts have consistently enjoyed more visibility than those in regions like Africa, Asia or Eastern Europe. The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science(2000) is emblematic of these trends, listing as it does a mere 17 scientists from India, China and Japan, as opposed to more than 500 from Great Britain, and featuring entries up to the 1950s, a period that roughly overlaps with decolonization in Asia.

This two-day virtual conference, accompanied by a roundtable discussion, brings together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds to address two main, interrelated questions: 

·       How did women contribute to the making and communication of scientific knowledge in the twentieth century? 

·       How do we study the history of women in science during this period? 

We begin from the premise that encounters with science happened in a multitude of settings and that statisticaldata, while essential, provides only a superficial insight into the myriad experiences of women in science and, indeed, what science itself meant in different regional and cultural contexts. Our aim is to move beyond the popular ‘heroine’ model to investigate the many hidden figures who worked not only as professional scientists, but also at the periphery and even outside of scientific communities as lab technicians, amateur scientists, school teachers, librarians, journalists or science writers. In so doing, we hope to raise new questions and formulate new methods for writing the history of women in science. What, for example, do textbooks, forgotten footnotes in scientific papers, conversations about female colleagues in male scientists’ correspondence or photographs of Indian women toiling at archaeological sites teach us about the history of women in science?

Possible topics include:

· Gender and the historiography of science: theories, methods and archives

· Pedagogy of science: government policies around science and education, women in tertiary education, science clubs, science in the home, science 

  education in religious institutions

· Cultures of scientific practice: laboratories, fieldwork, secondary school teaching, scientific instruments, relationship between professional and amateur 

  science

· Scientific communication: scientific periodicals, mass media and science journalism, museum work, popular science writing, photography, the arts

· Representations of women and gender in science

· Women and scientific networks: personal and professional networks, associational culture 

Keynote speakers: Prof Mariko Ogawa (Mie University) & Prof Andrea Pető (CEU)

We welcome contributions from both experienced and early career scholars. We encourage especially scholars working in/on countries and regions that are less represented to apply, in order to promote a global dialogue on this matter. Please send your proposals for 20-minute papers (abstracts of max. 300 words), along with a brief biographical note, to womeninscience2021@gmail.com by the deadline of 15 January 2021. Successful applicants will be notified by 15 February 2021. The conference will be held virtually via Zoom or heiCONF and participants will have the option of presenting their papers live or in pre-recorded format. For queries please do not hesitate to contact the organizers at the above email address. 

• Circulation of ideas, norms and practices across national borders in various professional and social fields (e.g. law, memorialization sites and practices, historiography, forensics, heritage etc.).
• Transnational mobilization for justice and memory of Southern European, Central Eastern European and former Soviet Union actors in international institutions, global NGOs, or at venues on other continents.
• The role of Southern Europe, Central Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in globalizing narratives and norms of dealing with the past. Entanglements within these regions, and between them and other areas of the world.
• The role of regional and international organisations and global NGOs in memory and justice processes in South Europe, Central Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
• Competing memories of rights wing and left wing dictatorial regimes.
• Local actors’ re-appropriation of and resistance to ideas and paradigms originating in other national or global venues.
  

• Essai de 2-3 pages (6 000 - 10 000 signes) sur le sujet du concours. Chaque essai doit être accompagné des coordonnées du/de la participant-e (nom, prénom, statut/fonction, institution, adresse e-mail).
• Lettre de motivation d’une page qui présente l’intérêt et les projets individuels passés, présents ou futurs liés à la thématique de l’égalité de chances et de la représentation politique des femmes.

• La sphère médiatique est plurielle : la télévision et des émissions spécialisées d’enquêtes ; la presse écrite, les nouveaux média et les média on-line ; le, journalisme d’investigation 

• La catégorie de « lanceurs d’alerte » est elle aussi large : des journalistes, des écrivains, d’anciens responsables politiques, de justice de la police, etc. 

• Les groupes civiques comprennent des ONG spécialisés ou des groupes créés ad hoc sur un problème de corruption concret.