Masarykův ústav a Archiv AV ČR, v. v. i. In Prague organises conference to look at how cultural outsiders, émigrés, refugees, and members of minorities imagined the sciences and their own position in them. They are interested in contributions discussing scholars who were (and/or regarded themselves as) outsiders/minorities on account of their cultural, gender, political or social identifications. Questions include, but are not limited to:

– How did minority scholars see their position within academic scholarship and its institutions? How did they define their minority-ness and otherness (e.g. representatives of “small nations” seeing themselves as a minor part of international science, members of ethnic and/or national minorities within nationalising states, etc.).
– What strategies did these scholars pursue to meet their goals (epistemic, political, career-oriented)?
– What alternative epistemologies did minority scholars develop or propose? How did they respond to epistemic proposals by mainstream scholars?
– How did minority institutions position themselves to the state-dominant institutions?
– How did minority and majority scholars differ in their strategies of asserting credibility, building networks, publishing, etc.? For instance, did they demonstratively publish in mainstream media to assert their status within the state, did they search for alternatives, or both?
– Can we talk about the specificity of a “minority science,” and how can the mainstream science narrative – our received narrative – be challenged through it?

Please send your abstract of no more than 350 words and a short biographical note by 15 October 2022 to Jan Surman (surman@mua.cas.cz).

The conference is organised by the project “Images of science” in Czechoslovakia 1918-1945-1968, financed by Lumina Quaeruntur fellowship of the Czech Academy of Sciences and hosted by the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

The conference will take place 30–31 March 2023, in Prague, Czech Republic. Travel costs and accommodations for speakers will be provided. We plan the conference to be in person. Language of the conference is English.

More information: https://www.mua.cas.cz/cs/akce/minority-science