MUSTS Events
Below you will find an overview of research events and colloquia organised by MUSTS.
Upcoming events 2023-2024
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 20 September 2023 | MUSTS Summer Harvest |
| 4 October 2023 | MUSTS Research colooquium with Sjoerd Zwart (TU Delft) |
| 8 November 2023 | MUSTS Researh colloquium with Tanja Schneider (University of St. Gallen) |
| 6 December 2024 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Camille Bellet (Wellcome Trust, CHSTM) |
| 17 January 2024 | Joint MUSTS/AMC/GTD colloquium on research funding |
| 21 February 2024 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Charles Pence (UC Louvain) |
| 20 March 2024 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Alison Powell (London School of Economics and Political Science) |
| 24 April 2024 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Mario Daniels (Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam) |
| 29 May 2024 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Luisa Reis Castro (University of Southern California) |
| 26 June 2024 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Liesbeth Bik & Jos van der Pol (Bik Van der Pol) |
Past events 2023
‘Phase change: A biomaterial history through silk’
Colloquium 28 June 2023. Speaker Lisa Onaga
The natural fiber of silk, unraveled from the cocoons spun by the caterpillars of silk moths, is best known as a textile material, but it is also a valuable key for unlocking a history of biomaterials. The making of silk threads in Japan has entailed a particularly dynamic history of biology due to scientific breeding of silk moths that improved specific material properties of silk filaments. Scientific activities centered around silk’s significance as a textile underwent a change during the 1990s as researchers increasingly tested new ways of rendering these proteinaceous filaments into astonishingly different physical forms unlike materials used typically for weaving.
Plural valuation of nature: understanding, relevance and use of ‘relational values’
Colloquium 31 May 2023. Speaker Stijn Neuteleers (Open Universiteit/Maastricht University)
In its most recent global assessment report, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) explicitly deals with the so-called plural valuation of nature (‘The methodological assessment report on the diverse values and valuation of nature’). A central element is the threefold distinction between intrinsic, instrumental and relational values of nature. The last few years, especially since 2018, this distinction has been increasingly used in environmental (social) science.
Einstein Telescope Building a billion-Euro-class research Infrastructure in Limburg?
Colloquium 26 April 2023. Speaker Stefan Hild (Maastricht University)
Most of our universe is dark, i.e. it does not send out any light or electromagnetic waves of other wavelengths. However, the recent discoveries of gravitational waves from merging black holes and neutron starts have opened up a completely new window into our universe and in particular its ‘dark side’. In Europe scientist are preparing the construction of the 2 billion Euro Einstein Telescope, a new generation of gravitational wave observatory, constructed as a equilateral triangle of 10 kilometer length, 250m underground.
Vital elements, post-colonial flows: Forensics as an art of paying attention
Joint MUSTS-GTD Colloquium 19 April 2023. Speaker Amade M'charek (University of Amsterdam).
Since 2014 more than 23,000 people have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. They have been attended to as “border death” (Last & Spijkerboer 2014), drawing attention to the militarization of Europe’s borders and its migration policy. But what if we made a decolonial move and crossed the Mediterranean, from Europe to Africa? What if we attended to death, not in relation to borders that kill, but in relation to life and livelihood?
Trouble in Moneyland: Trajectories of Mediation in Financial Technologies
Colloquium 29 March 2023. Speaker Sebastian Giessman (University of Siegen/Humboldt University Berlin).
My talk analysed two parallel historical trajectories, and their uneasy convergence in contemporary digital cultures. It reconstructs a mode of financialisation that infrastructurally combines instant messaging and digital payments. How, why and for whom should these two ways of interacting converge? What are the economical stakes of combining platform and app economies? I inquired into these questions from a point of view that integrates history, STS, and media theory. Thus, the alternative title of this talk could have been “every mediation counts.”
How philosophical beliefs about science affect science education in academic engineering programs: the context of construction
Colloquium 1 March 2023. Speaker Mieke Boon (University of Twente)
Science education in academic engineering programs: aims and claims: Academic (i.e., university level) engineering programs, such as BSc and MSc programs at Technical Universities in Europe, aim to educate future engineers for academic and professional roles in solving complex (socio-)technological problems. An important learning objective described in policy documents is that academically trained engineers are able to use scientific approaches.
Cyrus Mody keynote speaker at Maastricht University’s 47th Dies Natalis
On Friday 27 January 2023, Maastricht University celebrated its 47th Dies Natalis around the theme “Bold yet prudent: technological innovation and society”.
On this joyous occasion at the Sint Janskerk in Maastricht (from 15:30), Rector Prof. dr. Pamela Habibović awarded the Wynand Wijnen Education Prize, the Dissertation Prize and the Student Prizes. Prof. Robert S. Langer has been awarded the honorary doctorate.
Why STS (does not) need(s) Animal History and vice versa
Panel discussion 26 January 2023 with Clemens Driesen (Wageningen University), Dolly Jorgensen (University of Stavanger), Mieke oscher (University of Kassel and Bert Theunissen (Urecht University)
Are concepts, methods and approaches from STS of any use for scholars who seek to historicize the lives of animals? And do animal histories have anything on offer for science and technology scholars? Where would cross-fertilizations be useful? And where do the two fields clash?
25 January 2023: Joint MUSTS-AMC colloquium - Research funding & CAST posters
Past events 2022 and older
| Date | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 7 December 2022 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Sally Randles (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Michiel van Oudheusden (Athena Institute VU Amsterdam) | Multiple past(s), present(s) and future(s) of de factor responsible research and innovation (rri) |
| 9 November 2022 | MUSTS Research colloquium (author -meets-critic) with Anna Harris, John Nott, and co-authors | Making Sense of Medicine: Material Culture and the Reproduction of Medical Knowledge |
| 5 October 2022 | MUSTS Research Day | "Science, Technology and the Non-Human |
| 21 September 2022 | MUSTS Summer Harvest | |
| 22 June 2022 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Elke Seefried (RWTH Aachen) | Planning the World Future: The Club of Rome and the Transformation of Future Studies |
| 25 May 2022 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Thomas Heinze (Bergische Universität Wuppertal) | Increased isomorphism and structural inertia. Public universities in Germany, 1995-2015 |
| 20 April 2022 | Joint GTD/MUSTS Research colloquium with Wagar Zaidi (Lahore University of Management Sciences), Ragna Zeiss, Lauren Wagner and Adam Dixon | STS and Transnational Methods, Perspectives and Topics |
| 23 March 2022 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Alice Street (University of Edinburgh) | Make me a test and I will save the world: Towards and anthropology of the possible in global health |
| 16 February 2022 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Charles van den Heuvel (Huygens University of Amsterdam) | Interacting with Big Historical Data of the Dutch Golden Age: Golden Agents and Virtual Interiors |
| 19 January 2022 | MUSTS Research colloquium | Research funding and CAST posters |
| 1 December 2021 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Angelique Janssens | Lifting the burden of disease. The modernisation of health in the Netherlands, Amsterdam 1854-1940 |
| 3 November 2021 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Willem Halffman (Radboud University Nijmegen) | Does Science Correct Itself? |
| 29 September 2021 | MUSTS Summer Harvest | |
| 22 June 2021 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Javier Lezaun (University of Oxford) | The Missing Swarm: Collective Entomological Inquiry and Global Health |
| 26 May 2021 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Teun Zuiderent-Jerak (Athena Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) | Making & Doing. Activating STS through Knowledge Expression and Travel |
| 21 April 2021 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Ruth Oldenziel (Eindhoven University) | Sustainable Urban Mobiiy since 1850 |
| 24 March 2021 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Victoria Tkaczyk (Humboldt University Berlin) | Sharpening the Mind's Ear: Technologies and Knowledge Techniques of the Sciences and Humanities around 1900 |
| 24 February 2021 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Ine van Hoyweghen (Leuven University) | Navigating Political Cultures of Solidarity: COVID-19 in he Belgian Chateau |
| 20 January 2021 | MUSTS Research colloquium | Research funding & CAST posters |
| 9 December 2020 | MUSTS research visit to the Collection of Scientific Instruments of Centre Ceramique | |
| 11 November 2020 | MUSTS Research colloquium with Frans van Lunteren (Vrije Universieit Amsterdam/Leiden University) | Historicizing the "laws of nature" |
| 7 October 2020 | MUSTS Summer Harvest |