Conference Report
The Making of Early Modern Scientific Knowledge:
Objects, Spaces, Practices and Epistemologies
2-3 July, 2010
University of Warwick
The Making of Early Modern Scientific Knowledge was a two-day international conference
held at the Wolfson Research Exchange, University of Warwick. The conference was
organized by Elaine Leong, Marie Thébaud-Sorger and Claudia Stein of the Department of
History and the Centre for the History of Medicine. The interdisciplinary meeting brought
together scholars from history of medicine and science, history of technology, history of
material and visual culture and global history. The conference assessed the variety and
complexity of knowledge making processes in five sessions: Commerce and Knowledge,
Spaces of Knowledge, Cultures of Expertise, Image and Authority, and Practices and
Epistemologies. Speakers and commentators included: David Beck (University of Warwick);
Paola Bertucci (Yale University); Sachiko Kusukawa (University of Cambridge); Cathy
McClive (University of Durham); Bruce Moran (University of Nevada, Reno); Carol Pal
(Bennington College); Harriet Palfreymann’s (University of Warwick); Christelle Rabier
(Institute d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, Paris); Giorgio Riello (University of Warwick);
Antonella Romano (European University, Florence); Dagmar Schaefer (Max Planck Institute
of the History of Science, Berlin); Lisa Smith (University of Saskatchewan); Iris Montero
Sobrevilla (University of Cambridge); Simon Werrett (University of Washington) and Kelly
Whitmer (Max Planck Institute of the History of Science, Berlin). The event was funded by the
Wellcome Trust and Roberts Funding, the Humanities Research Centre, the Centre for the
History of Medicine and the Department of History at the University of Warwick.
Elaine Leong, Claudia Stein and Marie Thébaud-Sorger
Department of History and the Centre for the History of Medicine