Biographies of Materials at the crossroads between the Natural Sciences and Humanities
The focus on the material dimensions of culture is a major distinctive feature of recent anthropological and historical studies. At the same time, materials science and engineering is a booming field of research and development which has virtually no connections with this trend in the humanities, with the exception of paleo-archaeologists and art historians who occasionally collaborate with material scientists.

The overall purpose of this project is to engage historians and anthropologists in a dialogue with material scientists in order to better characterize the hybrid life of materials as natural entities and social or economic agents. This workshop is meant to start a collaborative interdisciplinary research network on humans’ interactions and interdependence with materials, as well as on the economic, societal and environmental impacts of materials studied from different perspectives.

The biographical metaphor is used to emphasize not only the life-stories of materials but also to their individuality and their agency. Additionally it favours narratives of the entanglements of human societies and economies with environmental cycles (depletion of natural resources, pollution), and with longer and shorter term temporalities (geochemical, climatic, seasonal, modes of production, market longevity, etc.)

On the basis of a variety of sample materials, ranging from conventional and archaeological materials to high-tech ‘materials by design’, the workshop will address a number of general issues such as:

* Between exploring the potentials of existing materials and creating new materials by design, what are the politics of materials research?
* To what extent do materials have multiple identities and uses? How do materials remain within or escape from human control?
* What modes of governance of material resources appear significant in historical and contemporary terms? What balances are exhibited between repairing, re-using, recycling, and throwing away, disposability?
* What is the significance of the durability (or lack thereof) of materials?
* Why and to what extent does the provenance of materials matter? What links do they have with particular localities?
* Can a molecule be considered a material? Is it analytically appropriate to extend the notion of individuated materials to the molecular scale and beyond as in nanomaterials?
* What sorts of relations could be drawn?? between materials and objects? What is the meaning and significance of their divergent biographical pathways?
* What are the advantages and limitations of the metaphor of materials’ biographies

PROGRAMME:

MONDAY MARCH 4

9 :30 Welcome coffee
10: 00 Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Marie Thébaud-Sorger
Introduction: Historical perspectives

Old & New Materials
11 :00 Hervé Arribart (ESPCI, Paris)
History of glass research: the quest for material’s perfection

11 :30 Michael Bycroft (University of Warwick)
The classification of gems in seventeenth-century France

12 :00 Hasok Chang (Cambridge University)
Chlorine: An Element of Controversy

MONDAY AFTERNOON
Society, economy, and sustainability

14 :00 John R.R. Christie (Oxford)
Alum: Temporalities, Modes of Production, Communities.

14 :30 Judith Rainhorn (parisI Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Entangled whites: lead and zinc oxydes between health and market, 19th c.

(Confort break)

15 : 10 Simon Werrett (UCL)
The power of lasting : Thrifty science and bodily maintenance

15:40 Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Plastics and the culture of disposal

Coffee break

Between Nature and Design (I)

16 :30 Clément Sanchez (Paris, Collège de France):
Hybrid materials: From history to bioinspired strategies

17:00 Frédéric Thibault-Starzyk (MFO)
Zeolites – the Swiss cheese materials: the interest is (mostly) in the voids

17 :30 General discussion

18 :00 Drinks

19 :00 Dinner

TUESDAY MARCH 5

Between Nature and Design (II)

9 :30 Viviane Quirke (Oxford Brookes University)
Oestrogen and its identities

10 : 00 Matt Paskins (LSE)
Tracing the Careers of Geraniol

10 :30 Coffee break

10 : 45 Derek McCormack (University of Oxford) & Marie Thebaud-Sorger (MFO/CNRS)
Making air matter

11 :15 Ludovic Coupaye (UCL)
Anthropology of Techniques, Anthropologies of Materials: The revealing dimension of technical activities.

TUESDAY 13:30- 15:00
Materials & Archeology

13:30 A.M. Pollard (University of Oxford)
Thinking Beyond Provenance for Archaeological Materials

14 :00 Loïc Bertrand & Étienne Anheim (CNRS & EHESS, Paris)
While studying material evidence of the early metallurgy of copper…

14 : 30 Stephen Johnston (Oxford Museum of History of Sciences)
The strange case of the missing materials: museological traditions and material investigations

15 :00 Wrap-Up and perspectives for future network
Date: 4 March 2019, 9:30 (Monday, 8th week, Hilary 2019)
Venue: Maison Française d'Oxford
Speaker: Various Speakers
Organisers: Mat Paskins (London School of Economics and Political Science), Stephen Johnston (History of Science Museum), Viviane Quirke (Oxford Brookes University), Emeritus Professor Bernadette Bensaude Vincent (Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne), Dr Marie Thébaud-Sorger (CNRS / MFO), John Christie (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: communications@mfo.ac.uk
Topics:
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://biographies-of-materials.eventbrite.co.uk/
Audience: Public
Editor: Robert Hoare