Four new I+D+I research projects for the CEHIC
Four CEHIC research projects will receive funding from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación through the 2019 call for "I+ D+ I Projects" in the "Generación de conocimiento" modality.
The selected projects are AGNOKNOWS directed by Agusti Nieto-Galan, SMALLSCIENCE, led by Xavier RoquéJ, NATURB with Carlos Tabernero as director, and MUSAUPOL, attached to the López Piñero Interuniversity Institute but co-directed by Jaume Sastre (CEHIC) and Josep Simon (Universidad de Valencia).
09/09/2020
AGNOKNOWS: “Invisible knowledge: The politics of censorship, and science popularitzation (1940-1990)”. Within the coordinated project "AGNOTOLOGY: INVISIBLE SCIENCE IN 20th-CENTURY SPAIN", and in collaboration between the CEHIC (UAB) and the Institute of History of Medicine and Science (IHMC) of the University of Valencia (UV)[PID2019-106743GB-C22]
Directed by Agustí Nieto-Galan, the subproject aims to explore various mechanisms and historical processes that made science (and knowledge, in a broad sense) invisible in 20th century Spain. We focus on case studies that focus mainly on the Franco dictatorship (1940-1975) and also on the period of the Transition to Democracy (1975-1990). The mechanisms for censorship of books and scientific articles, scientific articles in periodical publications and the daily press, and the political burden that the censorship entailed in terms of social control and propaganda to the dictatorship are studied. The subproject also approaches several cases of science dissemination, the dictatorship and democracy, which served particular interests and prioritized certain research topics to the detriment of others that remained invisible to the general public.
SMALLSCIENCE: "Small science: a historical survey of contemporary small-scale research"[PID2019-105131GB-I00]
The project seeks to better understand contemporary science through the historical analysis of the work of small groups of researchers, producing excellent research with simple, modest means. We contend that small science has not ceased to be an essential element of contemporary research practices. Combining expertise in Physics, Astronomy, History and Engineering, and involving members from five universities, the research team will survey the origin and uses of the term of small science and related terms; characterize contemporary small-scale research practices through well- defined case-studies in materials science, theoretical physics, astronomy, and space sciences; and study the boundaries between small and Big Science, and consider their relevance for science policy, science communication, and science education.
NATURB: "Urban narratives about nature. Contemporary construction of natural history knowledge (Spain and Great Britain, 1950-1980)" [PID2019-106208GB-I00]
This project , directed by Carlos Tabernero and which gathers seven researchers from seven different academic institutions in Spain and Great Britain, will focus on processes of construction and circulation of natural history knowledge in Spain and Great Britain between the 1950s and the 1980s. It aims at generating specific knowledge concerning the commanding role that actors, spaces, discourses and practices located in urban contexts exert in the production and management of narratives about nature, that is, in the ways nature is represented according to strategically situated interests and criteria, and which are often appropriated ideologically through the definition and management of natural heritage, for this involves decisive aspects concerning the use and administration of natural resources.
MUSAUPOL: “Museums, Classrooms and Politics: Scientific and Technological Culture in the Spanish Transition” [PID2019-104897GA-I00]
The project, with Jaume Sastre-Juan (CEHIC) and Josep Simon (Universitat de València) as main researchers, is based at the Institut Interuniversitari López Piñero and gathers a team of 17 researchers from 9 national and international institutions. MUSAUPOL deals with the cultural politics of science and technology in Spain during the Spanish Transition. It does so by focusing on two spaces, the classroom and the museum, through a wide set of case studies that analyze the pedagogical practices of experimental sciences as well as the display of science and technology, always in relation to the processes of political change that took place in that period. The project aims at looking from a new angle a period that has a large -yet still young- literature, by using the lens of the history and science, and approaching it through methodologies including traditional printed and manuscript sources, but also the analysis of objects and spaces of display, as well as oral history.