Dolores Martín Moruno: Theoretical tools for approaching the history of science from the history of emotions and experience

This workshop aims to familiarize participants with the conceptual tools which have been developed in the history of emotions and, more recently, in the history of experience for the renewal of the history of science, medicine, and technology.

Drawing on the most significant research that has been conducted since the announcement of the so-called "affective turn", we will show that emotions have a long history that is intimately linked to the social, cultural, and material history of science. We will examine the main theories that have transformed emotions into an object of scientific study, as well as the role that emotions have played in the processes of observation and experimentation, and in shaping the social formation of the scientific ethos.

Finally, we will analyze the inherent methodological limitations of using emotion as a category of analysis and the advantages of adopting the approach proposed by the history of experience in order to understand the history of science. This exercise will lead us to explore how marginalized groups within the scientific field have —through their experiences— constituted a plurality of knowledge(s), which has the potential to broaden the horizons of the history of science.

Dolores Martín Moruno is a senior research scientist at the Milà i Fontanals Institution for Research in the Humanities (CSIC) in Barcelona. Her publications include Emotional bodies: The historicalresearch scientist at the Milà i Fontanals Institution for Research in the Humanities (CSIC) in Barcelona. Her publications include Emotional bodies: The historical performativity of emotions (Illinois University Press, 2019), Making Humanitarian crises: Emotions and images in history (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), and Beyond compassion: Gender and humanitarian action (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

This seminar is part of the “Workshops on Historiographic Tools” (WHITS) series and is part of Module 7 "Individual, health and society: Science and biopower" in the "University Master’s degree in History of Science: Science, History and Society" (UAB-UB-UPF-CSIC). It is primarily aimed at master students but is open to the entire academic community.

Video of the seminar "Theoretical tools for approaching the history of science from the history of emotions and experience" (DDD-UAB, in Spanish)