Science, société et Etat

Science, Society and the State, 1870-1935 

Call for papers

Postgraduate Conference 3-4 September 2015
University of Nottingham

Submission deadline 6 July 2015

The years 1870-1935 saw a number of seminal breakthroughs in the fields of science and medicine. In this period, links between science and the modern state, and the place of science in society, became increasingly significant. Universities expanded, and the new disciplines of clinical psychology, sociology and anthropology began to emerge. Ideas of eugenics, race, sexology and psychology proliferated and interacted with both popular and intellectual culture. European medical and scientific practices were imposed in a colonial context, where they came into contact with non-Western ideas of healing.

The aim of this interdisciplinary postgraduate conference, supported by the Royal Historical Society and the University of Nottingham, is to address the histories of science and medicine under the rubric of power, knowledge and control. We invite papers that address the process by which certain subjects became the focus of medical and scientific attention, and in particular how science became inscribed onto popular consciousness. We also invite researchers working on the inter-relationship between colonial and metropolitan state practices, and the use of medical knowledge on subject populations. We hope to bring together postgraduates and early career researchers working in any area of the history of science and medicine, with any geographical focus.


Confirmed keynote speakers: Dr Pratik Chakrabarti, University of Manchester and Professor David Edgerton, Kings College London.


Possible themes, are not limited to, but may include:

- Science and the formulation of state policies

- State authority and the pathologised subject

- Popular understandings of science and medicine

- Science/medicine and national identity

- The economics of science and medicine

- The relationship between science and religion



We welcome proposals for both 20 minute papers, and for panels of three papers.

Please send any enquiries and abstracts of 250 words, along with a brief CV, to Richard Bates r.bates@nottingham.ac.uk and Siobhan Hearne, siobhan.hearne@nottingham.ac.uk by 6th July 2015.