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Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Institut d'Història de la Ciència

New Special issue

16 Jun 2023
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A special issue‘Enlightened female networks: gendered ways of producing knowledge (1760-1840)’organized and guest edited by Anna Maerker, Elena Serrano and Simon Werrett

https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2021.0072

 

Enlightened_female_Elena Serrano_IHC

Abstract

This special issue investigates women's scientific networks in Europe roughly between 1720 and 1830, an interesting period from a gender point of view. The articles analyse the role that networks played in enabling, shaping and circumscribing women in their intellectual pursuits, social aspirations and ideals. They also focus on the nature of the members' relationships, how women negotiated their scientific identities and how often women could use their femininity to create new social spaces for themselves and their families. We traced different types of networks such as ‘paper’, ‘technical’, ‘distant’ (in its special and temporal sense), ‘moral’ and ‘mixed’, as well as how many of these networks were characterized by broad intellectual engagement that was never exclusively scientific, but also literary, poetic, educational and philosophical.

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