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Prof Dr Karin Bijsterveld (K.T.)

Research profile

Karin Bijsterveld's research focuses on topics at the crossroads of Science and Technology Studies and Sound Studies. She has published on the history of public problems of noise, on the sounds of the past, and on the relationship between music and technology in Social Studies of Science, Osiris, Technology and Culture, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, The Senses & Society, and Isis. See for co-authors and other details: CV (under Files on profile page). 

 

Her 2007 inaugural lecture focused on the history of car radio and interior car sound  She is author of Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture and Public Problems of Noise in the Twentieth Century (MIT Press, 2008). With José van Dijck, she co-edited the volume Sound Souvenirs: Audio Technologies, Memory and Cultural Practices (Amsterdam University Press, 2009). She is also co-editor, with Trevor Pinch, of the Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies (Oxford University Press, 2012).

 

Among her other publications are the edited volume Soundscapes of the Urban Past: Staged Sound as Mediated Cultural Heritage (Transcript, 2013), the monograph Sound and Safe: A History of Listening behind the Wheel (Oxford UP, 2014, with Eefje Cleophas, Stefan Krebs and Gijs Mom), a special issue on Auditory History for The Public Historian, and the monograph Sonic Skills: Listening for Knowledge in Science, Medicine and Engineering (Palgrave, 2019), https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/978-1-137-59829-5y

 

More recently, she published Interdisciplinarity in the Scholarly Life Cycle: Learning by Example in Humanities and Social Science Research (co-edited with Aagje Swinnen, 2023, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-11108-2), and "Forensic Voices," a special issue for Sound Studies (co-edited with Anna Kvicalova, 2023).

 

Many publications have been the result of NWO-funded projects such as The Ring of Machines, Sound Technologies and Cultural Practices, Selling Sound: The Standardization of Sound in the European Car Industry and the Hidden Integration of Europe, and Soundscapes of the Urban Past: Staged Sound as Mediated Cultural Heritage. In 2010, Karin Bijsterveld was awarded with a NWO VICI grant for Sonic Skills: Sound and Listening in Science, Technology and Medicine, 1920s-now (http://fasos-research.nl/sonic-skills/).

 

One of her outreach projects has been The Sound of Amsterdam, a sound installation at The Amsterdam Museum, created in collaboration with Soundscapes project team and the American company HMMH. It featured three stories on the sound of Amsterdam at the end of 19th century, the interwar period, and World War II, as well as interactive simulations of the Dam Square soundscapes in 1895 and 1935. 

 

Funded by NWO-KIEM and in collaboration with Image and Sound, Uitgeverij Rubinstein published her popularizing audiobook Weg van lawaai: Geschiedenis van geluid in en om de auto (2019). Together with Image and Sound, and with Q42, she turned an expanded version of the audiobook into a GPS-based app (2022), funded by the foundation ArchiScienza: https://apps.apple.com/app/weg-van-lawaai/id1605951408

Key publications
Bijsterveld, K., & Swinnen, A. (Eds.) (2023). Interdisciplinarity in the Scholarly Life Cycle: Learning by Example in Humanities and Social Science Research. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11108-2
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Other publications

Key publications (see CV under Files for all publications)

  • Bijsterveld, K. & Swinnen, A. (Eds.) (2023). Interdisciplinarity in the Scholarly Life Cycle: Learning by Example in Humanities and Social Science Research. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-11108-2.
  • Bijsterveld, K. (2023). Spatial Rituals and Ritualized Space in Dutch Postwar Homes for the Elderly: Anthropology in History. In Bijsterveld, K. & Swinnen, A. (Eds.). Interdisciplinarity in the Scholarly Life Cycle: Learning by Example in Humanities and Social Science Research (pp. 173-189). Basingstoke: Palgrave. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-11108-2.
  • Bijsterveld, K. (2023). Eavesdropping by the Eye: Detecting Sonic Events and Cultures of Acoustic Intelligence. In Bijsterveld, K. & Kvičalová, A. (Eds.) Forensic Voices: Cultures of Sonic Detection and Identification in the West. Special Issue for Sound Studies, 9, 2, 233-252. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20551940.2023.2247649
  • Bijsterveld, K. & Kvičalová, A. (2023). Forensic Voices: Cultures of Sonic Detection and Identification in the West. Special Issue Introduction for Sound Studies, 9, 2, 155-165. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20551940.2023.2232211
  • Bijsterveld, K. (2021). Slicing Sound: Speaker Identification and Sonic Skills at the Stasi, 1966-1989. Isis, 112, 2, 215-241. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/isis/2021/112/2
  • Bijsterveld, K. (2019). Sonic Skills: Listening for Knowledge in Science, Medicine and Engineering (1920s-present). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/978-1-137-59829-5
  • Bijsterveld, K. (2018). Sound Waves of Protest: Noise Abatement Movements. In M. Bull (Ed.), Routledge Companion to Sound Studies (pp. 81-89). New York [etc.]: Routledge.   
  • Bijsterveld, K. (2015). Ears-on Exhibitions: Sound in the History Museum, The Public Historian, 37, 4, 73-90. 
  • Bijsterveld, K., Cleophas, E., Krebs, S. & Mom, G. (2014). Sound and Safe: A History of Listening Behind the Wheel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Bijsterveld, K. (Ed.) (2013). Soundscapes of the Urban Past: Staged Sound as Mediated Cultural Heritage. Bielefeld: Transcript. http://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-2179-2/soundscapes-of-the-urban-past/).
  • Pinch, T. & Bijsterveld, K. (Eds.) (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Bijsterveld, K. & Dijck, J. van (Eds.) (2009). Sound Souvenirs: Audio Technologies, Memory and Cultural Practices. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.  http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=340032
  • Bijsterveld, K. (2008). Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture, and Public Problems of Noise in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
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