Time: 11.4.2025 at 3 pm
Venue: The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (Mariankatu 5)
The History of Science project will host an afternoon seminar on current methodological considerations in the history of science and knowledge on Friday 11 April 2025. Two invited guests will start off the discussion with opening remarks on the following topics:
- Prof. Stéphane Van Damme (École Normale Supérieure): When Practices, Places and Materiality Mattered: A French Trajectory in the History of Knowledge
- Prof. Johan Östling (University of Lund): Book presentation on The History of Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Stéphane Van Damme is a professor in the history department of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris). His research focuses on modern science and European culture from the 16th to the 19th century, examining the founding fathers (Bacon, Descartes, Linnaeus), scientific disciplines (philosophy, botany, chemistry, archaeology), scientific academies and capitals, and imperial projects. In 2020 he published Seconde Nature. Rematérialiser les sciences entre Bacon et Tocqueville, and in 2023 book on science and scepticism.
Johan Östling is Professor of History, Director of the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge (LUCK), and Wallenberg Academy Fellow at Lund University. In 2025, he is a Visiting Professor at Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Helsinki. Östling’s research is mainly devoted to the history of knowledge, but he has a more general interest in the intellectual, political, and cultural history of modernEurope. His recent publications comprise the trilogy Circulation of Knowledge (2018), Forms of Knowledge (2020), and Knowledge Actors (2023) as well as the introductory book The History of Knowledge (2023). He is currently leading the comparative research project “The Europeanisation of the Universities: Transforming Knowledge Institutions from within, c. 1985–2010”.
Participation is open to all interested. Please register by email to stefan.nygard@acadsci.fi.