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Bergen, 5-7 November 2025

Scientific program


Wednesday November 5
Venue: HVL

12:00 13:00 – Registration

13:00-13:15 – Welcome (Room F119)

13:30-14:45 – Parallel session A and B

Session A: Meetings between science and policy. Research policy in the post-war period in Norway and Sweden
Room F119

  • Vera Schwach & Kari Tove Elvbakken: «Priority and downplay: The role of public research institutes in Norwegian policy for research»
  • Per Lundin & Ingemar Pettersson: «Setting the Stage for Science Policy: The Parliamentary Debate on Research in 1960s Sweden»
  • Terje Finstad: «Universities and research institutes in the innovation economy, from 1960s to today»

Session B: Scientific collections and heritage
Room F204

  • Emma Angelini Bongiovanni: «A Path Between Continuity and Innovation: Communicating Electrical Science through the Instrument Collection of the Politecnico di Torino»
  • Anne Vaalund: «Gems from the university clutter: Reflections on how to catch and preserve histories of academic material heritage»
  • Roland Wittje & Ida Margrethe Klingvall: «The Atom in the Universe: Heritage and History at the Physics Department of the University of Oslo»

14:45-15:15 – Break

15:15-17:00 – Parallel session C and D

Session C: Communications and visualizations. The Sciences and the Sàmi in the nineteenth and twentieth century
Room F119

  • Jukka Nyyssönen: «Communicating knowledge on the Skolt Sámi in unstable contexts: Väinö Tanner and the unclarified colonial potencies of Finland»
  • Astri Andresen: «Scientists/scholars and organic intellectuals on Sámi culture and utilization of land»
  • Svein Atle Skålevåg: «Prince Roland Bonaparte and the anthropology of the Sàmi, 1884»

Session D: Novel ways of teaching science
Room F204

  • Camilla Bergen Vik, Thi Thanh Thao Dinh, Helena Bichao & Annette Lykknes: «Locating historical ways of communicating «heat» to inform science teaching»
  • Hariett Palfreyman & Elizabeth Toon: «Using history of science in teaching science communication»
  • C Sayuri Tanabashi, Shikoh Shiraiwa, & Suzie Thomas: «Constructing interdisciplinary narratives through a nuclear dark heritage for university students in Japan»
  • Unni Eikeseth: «Science Stories: Contemporary Nobel Prize-Winning Research as a Gateway to Understanding the Nature of Science»

Thursday November 6
Venue: Bergen University Museum (map)

09:00-09:45 – Museum experience

09:45-10:30 – Keynote 1: Anne Eriksen: «Bergen Museum 1825. Knowledge for a Public Sphere»
Room: Tårnsal

Venue: HVL

11:15 – 12:30 – Parallel Session E and F

Session E: The museum as a scientific site
Room: F119

  • Natalija Ćosić: «The Museum as an Epistemic Arena: Scientific Authority and Knowledge Production of Lepenski Vir»
  • Paola Bernadette Di Lieto: «Communicating Scientific Memory: Museums, Objects, and Cultural Heritage in Modern Italy»
  • Phil Loring: «The curator is the problem»

Session F: Science that shapes society
Room F204

  • Ageliki Lefkaditou: «Between Numbers and Life Paths: The Practice of IQ testing in School Transfers in Oslo, 1930s–50s»
  • Jon Røyne Kyllingstad: «Historicizing intelligence: tests, metrics and the shaping of contemporary society»
  • Kristin Mikalsen: «“I’m 4.7% Ethnic”: Natural Science in Memory Cultures»

12:30-13:30 – Lunch (HVL Cafeteria)

13:30 – 15:15 – Parallel session G & H

Session G: Communicating and producing science
Room F119

  • Karen A Rader: «Correspondence as Informal Education: Adult Distance Learners, Scientists, and their Pedagogies, 1930-1950»
  • Phillip Roth: «Formalizing Informal Communication: The Origins of the Preprints Exchange System in High-Energy Physics in the 1960s»
  • Hari Sridhar: «Naeem revisits Naeem et al. 1994: reading between the lines of a scientific paper (communication)»
  • Marius Buning: «Privileges, Print, and Power: Governing Scientific Communication in Early Modern Europe»

Session H: Science in the Cold War
Room F204

  • Ahto Apajalahti: «Constructing a liberal democracy: Western science communication in the Cold War context»
  • Tsira Chikvaidze and Tina Gudushauri: «Science under the Red Star: Posters as Propaganda and Mass Communication Tools in the Soviet Empire»
  • Elena Kochetkova: «Making Food Modern: Food Chemistry and the Project of Synthetic Food in Eastern Europe during the Cold War»
  • Peder Roberts: «The Military Advantages of Unclassified Research in 1950s Arctic North America»

15:15 – 15:45 – Break

15:45 – 17:00 – Session I

Session I: Medicine, ideology, and remarkable cures
Room F119

  • Shu Wan: «Medicine or Miracle?: The Cure of Hearing Loss and Its Ideological Implications in Socialist China»
  • Lise Camilla Ruud: «Testicle juice»
  • Vincent Roy-Di Piazza: «Medical authority and the racial anatomy of skin: the case of Abraham Bäck (1713-95)»

18:30-19:30 – Guided Tour, Venue: Fiskerimuseet (map)

19:30-22:00 – Conference Dinner, Venue: Fiskerimuseet

Friday November 7
Venue: HVL

09:00-09:45 – Keynote II: Staffan Bergwik: «Epochs, trajectories, rhythms: Visions of historical time and scientific knowledge in the 20th century»

09:45-10:15 – Break

10:15-11:30 – Parallel session J and K

Session J: Museums and the exchange of knowledge
Room D121

  • Solveig Marie Siem: «Spreading Skills and Sprouting Opportunities: Active Knowledge Exchange via Botanical Museums and Gardens in Nineteenth Century Norway»
  • Lisa Sputnes Mouwitz: «The Guest Book – tracing practical knowledge transfer within a museum’s collection»
  • Hege Roll-Hansen: «Tracing the Origins of the Norwegian Mining Museum in Kongsberg»

Session K: Science made by people in time and space
Room D122

  • Linnea Soler & Smita Odedra: «Exploring the lived experiences of students, academics, and staff at the School of Chemistry, University of Glasgow, through oral histories: What can we learn about the everyday culture in our recent past?»
  • Brigitte Van Tiggelen & Annette Lykknes: «Writing About Gender and Women Studies and Their Relation to the History and Historiography of Chemistry»
  • Lorenzo De Piccoli: «Per arricchir di nuovi arcani il Mondo: Astronomy and didactic poetry in 18th-century Italy»

11:45-13:00 – Lunch

13:00-14:15 – Parallel session L and M

Session L: Health, disease, and medicine in the 19th century
Room D121

  • Andreas Jüttemann: «How pan-European scientific communication contributed to the fight against the re-emergence of leprosy in the Baltic States in the 19th century»
  • Jenny Sure: «The Construction of a Collective Fear? Yellow Fever in the German Media from 1800 to 1806»
  • Shan Jiang & Ulrike Spring: «Carl Peter Thunberg and the circulation of bloodletting knowledge in Europe and Japan (late 18th and early 19th centuries)»

Session M: Communication and applied scientific knowledge
Room D122

  • Sarah Renee Hamilton: «Irrigation from Down Under: Science and policy debates on the viability of irrigation in Australia’s Great Artesian Basin, 1884-1945»
  • Menz Indergaard: «Applied seaweed science and the media: Seaweeds communicated as ‘treasures of the sea’ since the 19th century»
  • Thomas Brandt: «Tank Work: The Trondheim Ship Model Tank and the International Circulation of Ship Modelling Knowledge ca 1930s-1960s»

14:30-15:30 – General Assembly
Room F119

(Last updated: September 9, 2025)