Biennial History of Astronomy Workshop

Biennial History of Astronomy Workshop - ND XV June 21-24, 2023

Overview

The Fifteenth Biennial History of Astronomy Workshop will be held June 21-24, 2023, at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and will include a one-day trip to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago

Call for Proposals

The call for session and individual paper proposals has opened with proposals due by 15 February 2023 (now extended from 1 February 2023).

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Workshop Details

Details about this year's workshop are available through the below links:

Conference Theme: Communicating Astronomy

The theme for NDXV is communicating astronomy. How is astronomical knowledge and expertise communicated, both within and beyond the astronomical community? Communication might include means of transferring or transmitting data between astronomers and other practitioners—involving issues of standardization, uniformity, and translation—or between experts and their instruments, as well as across disciplinary boundaries and to the wider public. How is knowledge produced and transformed through these processes? How have changes in tools and methods of communication impacted astronomy? Papers exploring methods and aspects of communicating astronomy in any context, geographical region, or time period are welcome. Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to: manuscripts and their circulation; epistolary networks; print culture and scholarly publishing; the use of diagrams and other visual resources to present data, concepts, and theories; communication technologies and devices; and the popularization of astronomy through print, performance, and broadcasting.

Invited Speaker

Photograph of Charlotte Bigg Our invited speaker Charlotte Bigg is a permanent research fellow with the French CNRS, Centre Alexandre Koyré. She was educated in history and history of science at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and has previously worked at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and ETH Zurich. Her work focuses on the material and visual dimensions of science, in particular astronomy and astrophysics. She studies the circulations of instruments, images, and people between disciplines, and between scientific and public settings including theaters, planetaria, museums, and exhibitions. She has co-edited a volume entitled The Heavens on Earth: Observatories and Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century (Duke University Press, 2010), and, most recently, the June 2021 special issue of the journal History of Science: The Spatial Inscription of Science in the 20th Century.

Adler-Mansfield Prize

The Adler Planetarium will bestow the Adler-Mansfield Prize on the author of an outstanding presentation given during the 2023 History of Astronomy Workshop. The award includes a modest stipend and travel expenses to the Adler Planetarium if the awardee wishes to carry out onsite research in the Adler’s collections.

Acknowledgments: Generous support for the workshop is provided by the Graduate Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts (ISLA), the College of Science’s Nieuwland Lecture Series, the College of Arts and Letters, the Department of Physics of the University of Notre Dame, and the Program of Liberal Studies of the University of Notre Dame, and the Adler Planetarium.