Following the symposium on the Histories of Expertise in September 2024 at the University of Turku in Finland, we are delighted to announce the call for contributions for an edited volume. This collection is dedicated to analysing the making of experts, expertise, and expert knowledge in human societies from historical perspectives. We invite contributions from historians of science, knowledge and technology, intellectual historians, and related disciplinary fields that consider the cultural, material and social processes that in specific historical contexts contributed to the making, contestation, application, reception, and mobilities of expertise. The main purpose of our volume is to consider expertise as an analytical tool to examine different types of individuals, ideas and initiatives in different social and cultural contexts. Building on feminist, postcolonial, decolonial, and global histories and historiographical developments during the past decades, the volume seeks to interrogate and go beyond normative understandings of expertise.
The contributions can address the following topics in the histories of expertise:
- Categories, types and forms of experts, expertise and expert knowledge, e.g. medical expertise and experts
- Changes in the status of experts and expertise, e.g. due to changes in patronage, governance, state systems
- Materialities / material culture relating to expertise and expert knowledge, e.g. print media, instruments, specimens
- Natural and social environments of expertise
- Mobilities of expert knowledge and experts, e.g. between geographical and temporal spaces, arenas of expertise
- Decoloniality, colonialism, power and expertise
- Gendered experiences and perceptions of expertise
- Relationship between education, academia and expertise
- Reception, contestations, and emotions relating to experts, expertise and expert knowledge
- And any other topic relating to the cultural and social impact of experts and expert knowledge
Abstract requirements are 300 words and a brief bio (250 words) by 1 December 2024. The abstract should state clearly the focus of the chapter, methods, materials, and describe the contribution to scholarship on the topic of the histories of expertise. Please send the abstract to the volume editors:
Dr. Juha Haavisto, European and World History, University of Turku, juha.haavisto@utu.fi
Dr. Ranjana Saha, European and World History, University of Turku, ranjana.saha@utu.fi
Dr. Johanna Skurnik, European and World History, University of Turku, johanna.skurnik@utu.fi
Notification of acceptance by 15 December 2024.
About our edited volume, we are in conversation with Manchester University Press. If your abstract is accepted, we will invite you to submit a full manuscript of 8000 words including references following MUP house style. Manuscript submission deadline 15 April 2025.
For any queries, please contact the editors by email.
Image: Walter Langley, Expert opinion, Birmingham Museums Trust, Wikimedia Commons.
