This Call for Papers may be of interest to members of the HNR community. The workshop, to be held in Rotterdam on 2-3 September 2021, will explore from an interdisciplinary perspective how living in an increasingly connected world has changed the way of making and spreading innovation. Historical contributions on any period and location are welcome.
Call for Papers – Deadline: 29 March 2021
Framing Innovation in a Networked World: An Interdisciplinary Workshop
Erasmus School of Philosophy, Rotterdam (The Netherlands)
2-3 September 2021
Organizer:
Paolo Rossini (Erasmus School of Philosophy, Rotterdam)
Confirmed speakers:
Klaas van Berkel (University of Groningen)
Mario Biagioli (UCLA)
Catherine Herfeld (University of Zurich)
Karena Kalmbach (Eindhoven University of Technology)
Roberto Lalli and Dirk Wintergrün (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
Chiara Lisciandra (University of Groningen)
Sandra Manickam (Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Rotterdam)
Tommaso Venturini (CNRS Centre for Internet and Society)
The exponential growth of social networks has opened new avenues for innovators. As the world has shrunk, diffusion of innovations has grown faster, while the number of collaborative inventions has steadily increased. But a networked world has also its challenges. The channels that allow a disease to spread are those that prevent its cure from being accepted. And, with the advent of social media, controversies over innovations have broadened and intensified, becoming more difficult to navigate. Here, lessons can be learned from history. We are not the first to live in a “small world.” 17th-century Europe already presented a high degree of connectedness, with a few brokers bridging politically and culturally disparate regions. In this context, scientific and technological innovation thrived, as discoveries—from Galileo’s telescope to Newton’s law of universal gravitation—were made at an unprecedented rate.
Framing innovation—how it is created and adopted, but also obstructed and denied—is an unescapable task for social scientists, historians, philosophers, computer scientists, and economists alike. The aim of this workshop is to foster a discussion across disciplines. Erasmus University Rotterdam has a tradition of interdisciplinary collaboration. Young scholars and leading experts are invited to share their research, discuss new methodologies, and communicate the results of their investigations. Submissions on any historical period and geographic location are welcome.
Abstracts no longer than 350 words accompanied by a short curriculum of the author(s) can be sent to rossini@esphil.eur.nl until 29 March 2021. The workshop will be in English.
Speakers and attendants will be able to participate in the workshop either in person or online.
The workshop is part of the project Cartesian Networks, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 891747.
