Dagmar Schäfer, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science 

Keynote address - 18 June, 10:00-11:15

Mobilities and histories of knowledge exchange in Eur(ope-)Asia-Africa.
Or:  Is China ‚Chinese'?   

This lecture addresses knowledge mobility through the lens of materials (objects, landscapes), and discusses the role historical and contemporary research approaches have on our view of what moves or is immutable in knowledge exchange.  Bruno Latour once argued that  ‘The history of science is in large part the history of the mobilisation of anything that can be made to move and shipped back 21 home[;]…expeditions, collections, probes, observatories and enquiries are only some of the many ways that allow a centre to act at a distance’ (Latour 1987: 225, 227). Still, social — rather than material -- movement  (or its absence) has traditionally played an important role in the history of science, technology and medicine in terms of transmission, transfer, circulation or exchange. But both in the history of science and mobility studies social structures are emphasized and analysed. Grounded in sociology, mobility studies too have primarily looked at mobility socially: "family/household, community, national, and the constellation of countries linked by migration flows’ (King and Skeldon 2010: 1640). Materials, landscapes and objects, by comparison, are rendered as context and result of mobilities and social flows. Addressed will be the methodological challenges of a focus on mobility of the immutable/mobile object in historical research and the implications of shifting from a sociological to a material approach also for our contemporary view of mobility. 

Professor Dr. Dagmar Schäfer, Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Dagmar Schäfer's main interest is the history and sociology of technology of China, focusing on the paradigms configuring the discourse on technological development, past and present. She has published widely on the Premodern history of China (Song-Ming) and technology, materiality, the processes and structures that lead to varying knowledge systems, and the changing role of artefacts - texts, objects, and spaces - in the creation, diffusion, and use of scientific and technological knowledge. Her current research focus is the historical dynamics of concept formation, situations, and experiences of action through which actors have explored, handled and explained their physical, social, and individual worlds.