The HAPP Network for the History of Physics aims to be the focal point for a new international group of historians, philosophers and practising physicists from a number of institutions including the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of Manchester, University of Stuttgart, University of Warsaw, CNRS Paris, Real Academia Española, Uppsala University and the American Institute of Physics. It will be holding a summer school in August 2018 for early career researchers and graduate students, which will examine the history of the key roles played by scientific instruments in the evolution of twentieth and twenty-first century climate science (a field the programme will call “environmental physics”).
This Summer School will survey the history of scientific instruments and seeks to contribute to the understanding of the development of recent climate science by exploring the role played by the physical sciences. Climate change has been an important concern for historians of science since the mid-1990s. There have been foundational accounts of the discovery of global warming and subtle portraits of changing views of climate and place over time, along with detailed studies of the history of meteorology and the rise of numerical modelling, and vital accounts of climate discourse and scepticism. Underlying this scholarship are abiding concerns with the diverse ways that climate has forced reassessments of scale, demanded new engagements between local histories and global measures, and engaged different sorts of audiences. Alongside these accounts are a range of studies that consider how instruments and tools of science have been deployed in the field to gather data in the service of such global projects. These accounts link supposedly metropolitan physical sciences with stories of empire and expose the challenges of making instruments work in remote locations. Finally, these studies will help historians of physics today engage creatively with the issues important in understanding the implications of global warming in distinctively different locales.
The Summer School sessions will focus on various scientific tools and techniques, including those used to investigate and represent the climate, linking scientific inquiry to the development and trade in specialist instruments. There will be visits to the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford and to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.
The Summer School will be held in the historic surroundings of Brasenose College at the University of Oxford with the provisional programme available here. Registration to attend the Summer School with payment of the registration fee of £195 which will also include the cost of all lunches and dinners can be done here by the registration deadline of Friday 30th March 2018. Bed and breakfast accommodation in rooms at Brasenose College for the duration of the Summer School can be booked and paid for here using the code HAPP2018 before selecting the Summer School dates. A limited number of bursaries to cover the registration fee are available to students and postdoctoral researchers from developing countries – to apply please send a request or any queries to happ-centre@stx.ox.ac.uk .
Further details on how to register here.