Ongoing projects
•Tittle: Exchange Zones of Epistemic Resistance and Alternative Innovation: Activism, Grassroots Movements and Expertise, 1970s-1990s (EXCHANGEACTIV).
Principal Investigator: Jaume Valentines.
Funding Agency: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades.
Period: 2024- 2028.
FPI Fellowship: 1
EXCHANGEACTIV is a research project funded by the "Proyectos de Generación de Conocimiento" (2023) program. It is a coordinated project and the title of the whole project is "Exchange Zones in the Production and Regulation of Technoscience in the Iberian Peninsula: Academics , activists and industry, 1930s-1990s", led by the UAB and with the López Piñero Institute of History of Medicine and Science (of the University of Valencia) as a partner.
This new coordinated project will focus on Spain and Portugal from the 1930s to the 1990s, paying special attention -as a novelty- to the period after the fall of the two long-lasting right-wing dictatorships and producing transnational narratives. The coordinated project is the result of two closely linked, articulated subprojects.
The subproject "Exchange Zones of Epistemic Resistance and Alternative Innovation: Activism, Grassroots Movements and Expertise, 1970s-1990s" will delve on the highly significant exchange zones between activists, grassroots groups and experts in the Iberian Peninsula during the last decades of the 20th century. Looking at them allows us to understand in a deeper historical perspective key current scientific debates that are strongly shaped by lay actors. The subproject will focus specifically on two interrelated domains 1.Activism as an epistemic actor; and 2. Activism as an innovation driver and will deal with three research lines: 1. Environment; 2. The Body; 3. The City.
Converging several of the previous national and international projects of the project researchers, this sub-project will focus on socially hybrid epistemic zones where activists and experts exchange knowledge, confront scientific ignorance and produce epistemic tools for political purposes in a wide range of 'steps. Specifically, the sub-project will address three major themes as main lines of research: the environment, the city and the body. All these lines will be articulated with the following intersectional dimensions: invisible actors, cognitive emotions, socio-technical imaginaries and transnational perspectives.
•Tittle: Small Science: construcción histórica de la investigación contemporánea a pequeña escala (SMALLSCIENCE).
Principal Investigator: Xavier Roqué.
Funding Agency: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades.
Period: 2024- 2027.
SMALLSCIENCE [PID2019-105131GB-I00] is a new research project of the "Programa Estatal de Generación de Conocimiento” (2020-2022). The project seeks to provide a better understanding of contemporary science through the historical analysis of the work of small groups of researchers who produce outstanding research with simple, modest means.
We contend that small science is still an essential part of contemporary research practices. Combining expertise in physics, astronomy, history and engineering, and with members from five universities, the research team will survey the origin and uses of the term ‘small science’ and related terms; describe 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 to science policy, science communication and science education.
•Tittle: CLIMASAT: Remote-Sensing Satellite Data and the Making of Global Climate in Europe, 1980s-2000s.
Principal Investigator: Gemma Cirac-Claveras.
Funding Agency: European Research Council.
Period: 2022- 2027.
CLIMASAT is an ERC-StG funded project that investigates the sociotechnical and power-laden practices by which electromagnetic radiation detected in the orbits is turned into climate knowledge
How do we perceive the global climate? The answer to this question is very important, considering that our perception determines our actions and, therefore, how we manage the climate crisis. The ERC-funded CLIMASAT project will study the history of global climate practices, discourses and policies in the 1980s and 1990s. Focusing on the production, circulation and use of data generated by three satellites in Earth orbit, the project will test We hypothesized that the ways in which satellite data were collectively negotiated, shared, maintained, and used by scientists, economists, policymakers, diplomats, and the media informed some understanding and actions on global climate. The findings will offer policymakers and researchers unprecedented insight into how satellite data mediated current perceptions of global climate.
•Tittle: Whispers of Time: Heritage as Narratives of Climate-Change (WRENCH).Principal Investigator: Marco Armiero.Funding Agency: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.Period: 2024- 2027.
Visit the WRENCH website: https://webs.uab.cat/wrench/
The last few years have demonstrated the vulnerability of our societies. The COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the effects of climate change have proved the fragility of the world as we know it.It is against this background that WRENCH aims to address the effects of climate change on tangible and intangible while widening the mainstream understanding of heritage to include storytelling, narratives, and ephemeral legacies. Building upon the UNESCO notion, WRENCH defines heritage as the ensemble of tangible and intangible legacies embedded into the landscape and the stories we tell about it, and our place in it. Tangible and intangibleheritage can activate narrative dispositive telling stories about not only the past but also the present and the future of the community. Even more than ruination, abandonment, or major disruption, it is when it becomes mute, unable to tell any story that heritage is lost forever. As climate change is part of the story communities around the world are experiencing, WRENCH envisions heritage as both something at risk and something able to tell a story aboutthe risk we are all running and the stories of collapse and adaptation.Interpreting heritage as a key ingredient of community identities and a pillar for community building, WRENCH proposes to shift from a user-driven approach to a living-heritage approach, that is, from a consumerist idea of heritage (something to be used by clients) to a citizens idea of heritage (something to inhabit and shape).Building upon this approach, WRENCH has the twofold goal of (a) developing a transformative transdisciplinary methodology involving environmental sciences, engineering, and humanities to investigate the impact ofclimate change on tangible and intangible heritage; (b) employing heritage as a storytelling tool to make the risks of climate change visible for a broader audience and explore how communities in the past have dealt with climate and environmental change.
•Tittle: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (STM20-iHC), SGR
Principal Investigator: Agustí Nieto-Galan.
Funding Agency: AGAUR.
Period: 2022- 2025.
In the context of the communication line of our History of Science master, we hold collaborations with private firms, museums, popular journals, and research centres is crucial strengthen new research lines that contribute to renew and revisit present-day strategies of science communication. Since 2017, the Synchotron Alba, the journal Investigación y Ciencia, TV shows such as Quequicom in the Catalan television, The Museum of Science and Technology in Terrassa, among many other public and private organizations have welcomed our master students and have strengthened our capacity to transfer academic knowledge in history of science to society at large. The group has also a longstanding tradition of collaboration with prominent cultural institutions such as the Ateneu Barcelonès, the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and the Centre d’Arts Santa Mònica (CASM). In all these places, we have regularly organized public lectures, debates, film festivals and international workshops devotes to several aspects of the history of science, which has raised the interest of varied and numerous audiences. Dr Carlos Tabernero, for example, has organized and international workshop on urban narratives of nature next May 2022 at the CASM
•Tittle: MaILHoC: Museums and Industry: Long Histories of Collaboration
Principal Investigator: Carlos Tabernero.
Funding Agency: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.
Period: 2022- 2025.
MaILHoC examines the processes of deindustrialization, concern about the impact of human activity on the environment, and the influence of ideas such as degrowth have made this relationship a source of controversy. Why does it seem that this long history has begun to be considered unethical?
By examining this phenomenon, MaILHoC directly responds to the challenge of exploring the relationship between cultural heritage, democratic values and politics from a historical perspective. MaILHoC explores how and by whom cultural heritage narratives are produced, used and communicated in different contexts. MaILHoC addresses this question by examining case studies in France, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The objectives of MaILHoC are to (i) describe historical attitudes towards industrial sponsorship; (ii) explore the actual or likely consequences of new approaches; (iii) examine the implicit normativity of existing practices; and (iv) analyze the institutionalization of ethics in STM heritage.