[spectre] CFP: History of Art x History of Science (Lausanne, 27-28 May 27)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: Juliette Bessette
Date: Sep 19, 2026
Subject: CFP: History of Art x History of Science (Lausanne, 27-28 May 27)

University of Lausanne, May 27–28, 2027
Deadline: Nov 16, 2026

History of Art x History of Science: Disciplinary Encounters, Tensions, 
and Transformations.

The conference aims to trace the ways in which the disciplines of art 
history and the history of science have observed and influenced one 
another from the eighteenth century to the present day. While the last 
decades have seen a proliferation of studies devoted to the 
relationships between art and science (through research on the visual 
culture of science, epistemic images, the materiality of knowledge 
production, or the history of technology), the historical and 
theoretical interactions between the two fields have received 
surprisingly little attention as an object of inquiry in their own right.

We seek to understand how two disciplines that emerged at different 
moments and under distinct epistemological configurations nevertheless 
developed enduring zones of contact: methodological borrowings, shared 
objects of analysis, institutional transfers, but also tensions, 
resistance, and conflicts of legitimacy. Particular attention will be 
paid to the circulation of structuring and operational concepts, whether 
historical (e.g. revolution, evolution, progress, rupture, turn, 
paradigm), epistemological (e.g. objectivity, evidence, observation, 
model, experiment), or material and media-related (e.g. visualization, 
materiality, apparatus, image, dispositif). How did transfers of 
concepts from one field to another alter their meaning and function? How 
did such transfers serve to legitimize, transform, or reconfigure one 
discipline through the lens of the other? Which social and intellectual 
contexts encouraged or hindered these exchanges? Finally, are these 
transfers reciprocal and balanced, or do they reflect asymmetrical 
relationships between the two disciplines?

These questions are especially pressing nowadays, when interdisciplinary 
approaches have become increasingly common, sometimes raising questions 
about their usefulness and possible limits. Moreover, debates 
surrounding the material turn, visual studies, historical epistemology, 
global histories of knowledge, and various forms of critical studies 
have reshaped both disciplines around shared questions about how 
knowledge is made. Through case studies spanning a broad chronological 
range, the conference aims to shed light on how each field has 
contributed to redefining the other. It also seeks to reflect on the 
contemporary implications of these intertwined histories at a time when 
collaborative research models have become central to the humanities.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
•    The transfer of concepts developed in one discipline and 
subsequently adopted in the other (“style,” “paradigm,” etc.)
•    The historiography of specific objects situated at the intersection 
of the two disciplines (perspective, scientific images, etc.)
•    The reception of art historians’ work within the history of science 
(Alois Riegl, Erwin Panofsky, Svetlana Alpers, etc.), and vice versa 
(Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, Nancy Cartwright, Donna Haraway, Bruno 
Latour, etc.)
•    The place of art history and the history of science within the 
broader context of the emergence and development of the humanities
•    The reception of philosophies of history in art history and the 
history of science, for example through concepts of progress or decline
•    The reciprocal responses of art history and the history of science 
to decolonial studies, symmetrical anthropology, the provincialization 
of Western knowledge, and related approaches
•    The reciprocal responses of art history and the history of science 
to various “turns” (linguistic turn, global turn, etc.) and critical 
studies (feminist studies, ecocriticism, etc.)
•    The history of institutions, projects, programs, events, and 
exhibitions aimed at promoting or fostering interdisciplinary 
historiography (e.g. the Warburg Institute, Leonardo/ISAST, Iconoclash)
•    The social and intellectual contexts that encouraged 
interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of art history and the 
history of science (Edgar Zilsel, Horst Bredekamp, Lorraine Daston, 
Pamela H. Smith, Peter Galison, etc.)
•    The impact of C. P. Snow’s “Two Cultures” on the intertwined 
historiography of art and science
•    The study and promotion of historical figures at the intersection 
of art and science (Leonardo da Vinci, Maria Sibylla Merian, Johann 
Wolfgang von Goethe, Ernst Haeckel, Richard Buckminster Fuller, etc.) 
and the ways in which these figures might have been mobilized to foster 
interdisciplinary research, or appropriated by one discipline or the other.

Proposals of max. 300 words should be submitted with a short CV to 
antoine.gallay at unil.ch and juliette.bessette at unil.ch by 16 November 
2026. Papers may be delivered in English (preferred) or French.

Organizing Committee
Jérôme Baudry (EPFL) Juliette Bessette (Unil-CRAL) Antoine Gallay 
(FNS-Unil) Rémi Mermet (FNRS-UCLouvain)


Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: History of Art x History of Science (Lausanne, 27-28 May 27). In: 
ArtHist.net, Sep 19, 2026. <https://arthist.net/archive/54242>.