Material Culture and Scientific/Technological Practices

Science and technology are based on practices - in the lab, the field, and the community. Research in this area focuses on instruments, experiments, observation, methods of interventions, the creation of new entities from new materials to artificial organisms, and ways of constituting these new objects, the interaction of embodied practices, skills (which include scientific personnel beyond the researcher), concepts and theories and machines/technology.

The STS/HPS knowledge cluster will allow scholars presently involved in the humanistic study of science and technology to compare different sites of knowledge formation, studying, for example, the emergence and productivity of large-scale interdisciplinary research networks, or how the normalization of patenting by university researchers has changed research practices, and would draw on existing artefact collections, such as those of the Canada Science and Technology Museum, and the developing collections of scientific instruments and technological artefacts at the University of Toronto and in Montreal.