- About
- Annual Lecture Series
- Book Launches
- 'Cum Panis' Seminars
- Festival Events
- Online Exhibitions
- Reading Groups
- Summer Schools
- Transdisciplinary Initiatives
- Visitors
- Webcasts
- Workshops
- 'Agrarian Orders and Transformations' Research Group
- 'Finding the Future' Research Group
- 'Global Epistemological Politics of Religion' Research Group
- 'Neurodivergent Socialities' Undergraduate Network
- 'The Right to Science' Research Group
- 'Science and its Others' Research Group
- 'Taste and Knowledge' Research Group
- Conferences
- The Team
About
The Centre for Global Knowledge Studies (gloknos) was founded by Dr Inanna Hamati-Ataya in autumn 2017 with support from the European Research Council, and inaugurated at CRASSH, University of Cambridge, in autumn 2018.
gloknos (/‘glɒnɒs/) is a multi-disciplinary research centre and intellectual community concerned with the constitution, diffusion, exchange, and use of human knowledges throughout history. It aims to foster advanced cross-disciplinary research and pedagogical training in Global Epistemics, as well as cross-sectorial exchanges and initiatives, through a global network of associate members and partners engaged in academic and public-oriented collaborations and activities, an institutional and virtual infrastructure, and a range of scientific and public dissemination channels dedicated to the diffusion of its research outputs to the widest audience.
Visit the Centre’s website for more information.
gloknos is initially funded for 5 years by the European Research Council through a Consolidator Grant awarded to Dr Inanna Hamati-Ataya for her project ARTEFACT (2017-2022), under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (ERC grant agreement no. 724451).
Annual Lecture Series
| Annual Lecture Series: 2021-22 |
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Soil research and practice of ethnopedology – gloknos annual lecture series 18 Feb 2022 15:00-17:00, Online |
| Annual Lecture Series: 2018-19 |
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Turning the global history of ‘technology’ upside down – gloknos annual lecture series 19 Oct 2018 4:00pm - 7:00pm, Room SG1 & SG2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Geographies of knowledge in ancient and modern Iraq – gloknos annual lecture series 4 Dec 2018 5:00pm - 7:00pm, Room SG1 & SG2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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In the Bay of Bengal: modelling empire, globe and self – gloknos annual lecture series 23 Jan 2019 5:00pm - 7:00pm, Room SG1 & SG2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Knowledge and war: paper technologies in early modern empires – gloknos annual lecture series 28 Feb 2019 5:00pm - 7:00pm, Room SG1 & SG2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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The political economy of nutrition in the eighteenth century – gloknos annual lecture series 8 Mar 2019 5:00pm - 7:00pm, Room SG1 & SG2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Circulating public knowledge: towards a new history of the postwar humanities – gloknos annual lecture series 2 May 2019 5:00pm - 7:00pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Heavens and earth: an empirical approach to knowledge across cultures – gloknos annual lecture series 14 Jun 2019 5:00pm - 7:00pm, Room SG1 & SG2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
Book Launches
| Book Launches: 2022-23 |
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Book launch: ‘Rethinking Evidence in the Time of Pandemics’ 26 Sep 2022 15:00 - 17:00, Room SR24, English Faculty 9 West Road, Cambridge & online |
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Book launch: Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies | gloknos 13 Apr 2023 15:00 - 17:00, Online |
| Book Launches: 2021-22 |
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Book launch – IR in a Post-Truth World | gloknos 6 Oct 2021 15:00 - 16:30, Online |
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Book Launch – Mapping, Connectivity and the Making of European Empires | gloknos 16 Nov 2021 2:00pm - 4:00pm, Online, via Zoom |
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Book launch – ‘The Right to Science: Then and Now’ 3 Dec 2021 16:00 - 18:00, Online |
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Book launch – Scientific History | gloknos 16 Dec 2021 17:00 - 19:00, Online |
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Book launch: Endangered Maize | gloknos 13 May 2022 16:00 - 17:30, Online |
| Book Launches: 2020-21 |
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Book Launch – Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics | gloknos 11 May 2021 5:00pm - 6:30pm, Online, via Zoom |
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Book Launch – Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity | gloknos 22 Jun 2021 5:00pm - 6:30pm, Online, via Zoom |
| Book Launches: 2019-20 |
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Knowledge Beyond Discipline | Global Epistemics Book Series Launch 29 Oct 2019 5:00pm - 7:00pm, Rooms SG1 & SG2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Book Launch – Nikola Tesla and the Electrical Future 30 Oct 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S1, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
| Book Launches: 2018-19 |
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Book Launch – Western Dominance in International Relations? – gloknos Sponsored Event 21 Jan 2019 6:00pm - 8:00pm, London School of Economics |
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Book Launch – Canguilhem 20 May 2019 3:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S1, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Book Launch – Making the World Global: US Universities & the Production of the Global Imaginary 11 Jun 2019 3:00pm - 6:00pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Book Launch – The Transforming Power of Cultural Rights: A Promising Law and Humanities Approach 17 Jun 2019 3:00pm - 6:00pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
'Cum Panis' Seminars
| Cum Panis Seminars: 2022-23 |
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War/organised violence and political evolution: the ancient Mediterranean to the modern world 10 Jul 2023 15:00 - 17:00, Online | Room S3, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge |
| Cum Panis Seminars: 2021-22 |
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The costs of recognition: global epistemological politics of religion | gloknos 14 Dec 2021 10:00am - 12:00pm, Online |
| Cum Panis Seminars: 2019-20 |
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Drake, Maroons and the Predation of Spanish Imperial Connectivity in the Sixteenth Century 29 Oct 2019 1:00pm - 3:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Consent, Prosent and Biomedical Data in the Era of Blockchain – gloknos seminar 30 Oct 2019 12:00pm - 2:00pm, Room S3, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Trade, Empire and Late-Victorian Economists 20 Nov 2019 2:00pm - 4:00pm, 1 Newnham Terrace, Darwin College, Silver Street, CB3 9EU |
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The Seventeenth-Century Safavid Diplomatic Envoy to Siam: A Politics of Knowledge Formation 12 Dec 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Neoliberalism’s Literary Rhythms: Engaging with Canonical Texts to Vanquish the Market Myth 24 Jan 2020 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Revisiting the North/South Binary: Towards a Thirding Lens 28 Jan 2020 2:00pm - 4:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Collection Ecologies: Insects, Information, and Improvement in Joseph Banks’s Knowledge Network 23 Jun 2020 4:00pm - 6:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
| Cum Panis Seminars: 2018-19 |
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States of Emergence, States of Knowledge: On International Relations Theorising in Rising Powers 6 Nov 2018 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Intangible Material Culture: Technical Knowledge Transfer in Architecture 28 Jan 2019 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Ranking the World: Globalising Status Competition in International Society 14 Feb 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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The Power of Agnosis and the Politics of the Unknown 14 May 2019 2:00pm - 4:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Becoming Worldly: Relationality as Methodology – gloknos 30 May 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Agriculture and Anti-Imperialism: The Transnational Career of Pandurang Khankhoje 4 Jun 2019 4:30pm - 6:30pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Consent, Prosent and Biomedical Data in the Era of Blockchain 10 Jun 2019 2:00pm - 4:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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The Burning Issue: Hazy Relations and the Construction of Knowledge in Land Management Fires 20 Jun 2019 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
Festival Events
| Festival Events: 2021-22 |
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Alternative proteins, alternative values: changing foods for a changing world 8 Apr 2022 15:30 - 17:00, Online & In Person at Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Plant Sciences, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EA |
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A world of tastes: nature, culture and the making of the palate 8 Apr 2022 17:30 - 19:00, Online & In Person at Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Plant Sciences, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EA |
| Festival Events: 2019-20 |
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Meat and potatoes: changing diets for changing times? 15 Oct 2019 5:30pm - 6:45pm, Sainsbury Laboratory , Auditorium, 47 Bateman Street , CB2 1LR |
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Can you live without chocolate? 19 Mar 2020 6:30pm - 7:30pm, Fitzwilliam Museum, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB2 1RB |
| Festival Events: 2018-19 |
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GM crops in human history 15 Mar 2019 5:30pm - 6:30pm, Room SG1 & SG2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Objects: carriers of knowledge 19 Mar 2019 5:30pm - 6:45pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Mill Lane Lecture Rooms, 8 Mill Lane, Cambridge, CB2 1RX |
Online Exhibitions
The ‘Travels of the Artic’ online exhibition curated by Dr Anna Gielas (University of Cambridge), launched on gloknos‘ website on 1 August 2021.
This online exhibition presents historical illustrations of the Arctic excerpted from print artefacts (periodicals, books and postcards), highlighting the cultural and technological constructedness of the far North during the long nineteenth century (1789-1914). In other words, the exhibition focuses on Arctic images as representations of matter and as matter in itself. With this dual focus, the overall goal of the exhibition is to invite reflections on how today’s cultural as well as technological socialisation influences our mental images and understandings of the Arctic regions.
Enter the Exhibition
Reading Groups
| Debt and Credit in Rural Communities Reading Group: 2020-21 |
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Financialisation and Food 29 Apr 2021 6:00pm - 7:00pm, Online, via Zoom |
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Debt, Agrarian Change and Capitalism 13 May 2021 6:00pm - 7:00pm, Online, via Zoom |
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Debt and Rural Subjectivities 27 May 2021 6:00pm - 7:00pm, Online, via Zoom |
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Finance and Rural Labour 10 Jun 2021 6:00pm - 7:00pm, Online, via Zoom |
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Vernacular Experiences and Stories 24 Jun 2021 6:00pm - 7:00pm, Online, via Zoom |
| Domestication Practices across History Reading Group: 2019-20 |
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Domestication and the Origins of Agriculture 4 Nov 2019 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Classical Heredity in the Roman and Medieval Worlds 18 Nov 2019 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Commanding Nature in Early Modern Europe 2 Dec 2019 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Commanding Nature in Early Modern Europe (rescheduled) 20 Jan 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Empires of Acclimatisation 3 Feb 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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The Mendelian Gene Goes Global 17 Feb 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Politics of Hybridisation 2 Mar 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Alternate Twentieth-Century Biotechnologies 16 Mar 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Engaging Modern Genetic Practices 30 Mar 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
| Global Imaginaries through the Ages Reading Group: 2019-20 |
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Prehistory: Agriculture and the Societal Imaginary 28 Oct 2019 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Mobile Knowledges Before the Classics 11 Nov 2019 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Global Classics? 25 Nov 2019 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Global Classics? (rescheduled) 9 Dec 2019 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Economic Globalisation in the Late First Millennium 27 Jan 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Imperial Imaginaries and the Making of Modernity 10 Feb 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Towards the Modern Subject 24 Feb 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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The Imaginaries We Were Born Into 9 Mar 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Hyper Globalism and the Retreat to the Local 23 Mar 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
| Knowledge and Digital Capitalism Reading Group: 2018-19 |
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Knowledge in the Age of Digital Capitalism 16 Oct 2018 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room 220, Mary Allan Building, Homerton College, Cambridge, CB2 8PH |
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Cognitive Capitalism 30 Oct 2018 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room 220, Mary Allan Building, Homerton College, Cambridge, CB2 8PH |
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Platform Capitalism | Algorithmic Governance 13 Nov 2018 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room 220, Mary Allan Building, Homerton College, Cambridge, CB2 8PH |
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Downloading the Dreaming 27 Nov 2018 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room 220, Mary Allan Building, Homerton College, Cambridge, CB2 8PH |
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Ordering Knowledge 22 Jan 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room 220, Mary Allan Building, Homerton College, Cambridge, CB2 8PH |
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Anticipatory Uncertainty 5 Feb 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room 220, Mary Allan Building, Homerton College, Cambridge, CB2 8PH |
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Future Science 19 Feb 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room 220, Mary Allan Building, Homerton College, Cambridge, CB2 8PH |
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Open Access 5 Mar 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room 220, Mary Allan Building, Homerton College, Cambridge, CB2 8PH |
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Teaching Machines 30 Apr 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room 2S3, Donald McIntyre Building, Faculty of Education, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 8PQ |
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Datafication 14 May 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room 2S3, Donald McIntyre Building, Faculty of Education, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 8PQ |
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Digital Literacy 28 May 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room 2S3, Donald McIntyre Building, Faculty of Education, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 8PQ |
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Digital Education 11 Jun 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room 2S3, Donald McIntyre Building, Faculty of Education, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 8PQ |
| Ontopolitics of the Future Reading Group: 2018-19 |
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Ontological Politics 11 Oct 2018 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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The Politics of Life Itself 25 Oct 2018 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Excavating Contemporary Capitalism 8 Nov 2018 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Geontologies 22 Nov 2018 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Ontopower 17 Jan 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Climate Leviathan 31 Jan 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Toxic Politics & Nuclear Bunkers 14 Feb 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Global Health Security | Cryopolitics 28 Feb 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S1, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Scopic Regimes | The Machine That Ate Bad People 14 Mar 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Non-Human Politics 25 Apr 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Ontofeminism 9 May 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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After Extinction 23 May 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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Living on a Damaged Planet 7 Jun 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Room S2, Alison Richard Building, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
Summer Schools
2023
Open Knowledge Summer School 2023
This is the second summer school of the ARTEFACT project, funded by the European Research Council. This year’s theme is ‘After the Green Revolution: The Science and Politics of Sustainable Food-Systems in the Anthropocene’, featuring a range of approaches from the History of Science and Technology, Politics and International Studies, Land Economics, the History of Food, Agriculture, and Public Health, Agro-ecology, Bioengineering, and the applied arts.
This summer school will take place from 24 to 28 July 2023 and is convened by Dr. Inanna Hamati-Ataya. It is organised by gloknos, the Centre for Global Knowledge Studies, in collaboration with the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) and the Global Food Security Interdisciplinary Research Centre (GFS), at the University of Cambridge.
The application deadline is 14 July at midnight, BST.
2019
‘The Science and Politics of Food in Human History‘
Open Knowledge Summer School 2019
The Open Knowledge Summer School in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities was a fully-funded,Widening Participation, multi-subject residential event hosted in August 2019 by gloknos at CRASSH, in Cambridge .
The deadline for applications has now closed and we are not taking submissions of interest.
Transdisciplinary Initiatives
The Transdisciplinary Initiative currently hosts four projects: you can find more information using the links below.
Objects is a modular project developed in collaboration with the Cambridge Global Food Security Interdisciplinary Research Centre. It aims to foster innovative transdisciplinary research by furthering our understanding of the scientific, historical, and social dimensions of food and agriculture.
Starting in 2018-19 with funding from the Isaac Newton Trust, the European Research Council, and the TIGR2ESS project, Objects has assembled multiple small groups of researchers from the natural, physical, and social sciences and well as the humanities, to discuss specific objects (ecofacts or artefacts) relating to global food security. You can watch the full series online now.
Leonardo is a project developed in collaboration with the Material Balance Research Group at the Politecnico di Milano. Through it we explore the structures and modalities of innovation and technical imaginaries of the past and future.
gloknos and publisher Rowman & Littlefield International (RLI) have launched a new, transdisciplinary book series on Global Epistemics.
Global Epistemics was founded and will be edited by gloknos’s Founding Director Inanna Hamati-Ataya, with RLI’s Isobel Cowper-Coles as its Commissioning Editor. The Global Epistemics book series is an important milestone for the ARTEFACT project, one of whose objectives is to develop interdisciplinary research on global knowledge studies. As gloknos‘s core academic dissemination arm, the series will foster, support, and promote empirically grounded and theoretically ambitious work that draws on advances across disciplines and speaks to audiences across and beyond disciplinary boundaries.
The series will be integrated into gloknos‘s research and dissemination structures, and will be managed by gloknos‘s core research team with the guidance of a substantial and multidisciplinary Editorial Review Board including world-leading experts in their academic fields and in the global organisation and circulation of knowledge.
The Right to Science project is an ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration led by a group of researchers in the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and law to further our understanding of how to protect and implement the right to science as a universal cultural right.
We all have a human right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress (the Right to Science [RtS]). The right has its origins in Article 27 of the United Nation’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted in the wake of World War II. In 1966, the UN turned these commitments into binding obligations under international law. The implication is that, just as governments are expected to respect the rights to, say, freedom of speech and due process, so they must also adopt measures to respect and ensure the RtS. The existence of this right is important for researchers and society. It adds a legal and moral dimension to a range of fundamental issues, including scientific freedom, funding, and policy, as well as access to data, materials, and knowledge. Yet, despite its potential for furthering science and human rights causes, the RtS has not received the attention it deserves.
Visitors
Matheus Duarte (August – December 2022)
Matheus Duarte is a post-doctoral research fellow (2020–2025) at the University of St Andrews, with the Wellcome-funded project The Global War against the Rat and the Epistemic Emergence of Zoonosis (grant number 217,988/Z/19/Z). In the project, he investigates the social and scientific history of rat-catching practices developed in Brazil, the USA, and in the French and British Empires during the first half of the twentieth century, and how these practices transformed the rat into a global actor on plague studies and intervention.
Matheus holds a PhD in the History of Science from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS- Paris). His main research interests lie in the intersection of History of Science, History of Medicine, and Global History. During his visiting fellowship at gloknos, Matheus Duarte will be exploring the emergence of rural plague in Latin America between the 1920s-50s, with a focus on Brazil and Argentina, discussing how this idea interacted with nation-building projects and public health modernisation as well as with global studies on rats and wild rodents.
Max Hancock (June – August 2022)
Max Hancock is a graduate student at the University of Chicago’s Committee on International Relations. His training is in IR, and current research focuses on topics in intellectual history, political economy, world systems, and the history of science. Currently Max is most interested in hybrids, human-animal relations, and nature-society dichotomies in the history of global capitalism. He is currently working on an article-length piece on biological computers and the making of world markets in the 1960s.
While in Cambridge, Max will be working on a paper revolving around several mid-century thinkers and actors and their work on biological computing. Max is working to situate his investigation at the point where the history of human knowledges, nonhuman intelligence, world systems, and economic thought collide.
Maria Birnbaum (Visiting 2021-2022, at gloknos, CRASSH and POLIS at the University of Cambridge)
Maria is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bern. She received her PhD in International Relations from the European University Institute (EUI) and works in the fields of Global Politics, Religious Studies, and Colonial History. Her work studies the relationship between diversity and order with a particular focus on religion and global politics.
Maria Birnbaum is currently part of the project “Religious Conflicts and Coping Strategies” at the University of Bern where she is working on a series of articles exploring the conditions and limits of liberal diversity governance (“The costs of recognition“), and the entangled history and politics of Israel and Pakistan.
She is also finalising a book manuscript titled “Becoming Recognizable” analysing arguments for the recognition of religion in global politics. Here she shows how attempts to conceptualise, institutionalise, and manage social and religious difference in South Asia and the Middle East shaped the state-making processes of Pakistan and Israel and the conflicts following them. She argues that recognition along the lines of religion – in terms of border making, representation, or demography – came with considerable costs.
In her new project, ”Histories and Hierarchies of Ignorance“, Maria Birnbaum studies cases where political and legal unintelligibility are conceived as forms of power rather than forms of suppression.
Maarten Meijer (October – December 2021)
Maarten is a doctoral candidate at the Department of International Relations at the University of Groningen. His doctoral research focusses on the history of soil as an institution of geo-biopolitical governance, drawing on histories of infrastructure, technology, (soil) sciences, colonialism, and fascism. More broadly, he is interested in political and environmental thought, cosmologies of the end, and philosophies of translation and diplomacy.
In addition to his academic work, Maarten is a co-creator of an award-winning contribution to the design contest ‘Giving a Voice to the North Sea’, organised by the Dutch NGO ‘the Embassy of the North Sea’. He currently works together with Studio Inscape on a serious game in which players negotiate on the changing future of the Oosterschelde region for the Water Disaster Museum in the province of Zeeland.
Helle Porsdam (September – November 2021)
Helle is a Leverhulme Visiting Professor, at gloknos and CRASSH through Michaelmas term 2021-22. She is Professor of Law and Humanities at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Law (CIS), Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen. She teaches American Culture and History in the SAXO Department, Faculty of the Humanities, University of Copenhagen, and Law and Humanities, the Culture and History of Human Rights and Cultural Rights at the Faculty of Law. She also holds a UNESCO Chair in Cultural Rights.
Helle did her PhD in American Studies at Yale University, has been a Liberal Arts Fellow twice at the Harvard Law School, as well as a fellow at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, and the University of Munich.
During her stay at the Centre for Global Knowledge Studies, Helle will work on aspects of the Right to Science that concern knowledge production and the conditions under which such production takes place. These include scientific freedom and responsibility, and also science diplomacy.
Carolina Gerwin (2018)
Carolina is a Visiting Researcher at gloknos and CRASSH in 2018. She has completed a Bachelors Degree in International Studies at Leiden University in The Hague, Netherlands, including a semester spent abroad at University College London.
During her visit, Carolina worked closely with gloknos’s core team on her current research project. Specifically, Carolina is very interested in exploring how new media and communication technologies are transforming the way that knowledge is produced and circulated in contemporary societies, and is currently investigating the similarities and differences between online platforms and older technological innovations of knowledge-transmission, such as the printing press and the book.
Webcasts
Watch the ‘On the Creation of (Global) Western Spaces‘ webcast series via YouTube.
Watch the ‘Epistemologies of Land‘ webcast series via YouTube.
Watch ‘Covid-19 as a Zoonotic Disease‘ via YouTube.
| Webcasts 2020-21 |
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COVID-19 as a Zoonotic Disease 23 Jul 2020 2:00pm - 4:00pm, Online |
Workshops
| Workshops and Symposia: 2021-22 |
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‘Epistemologies of Soil’ Symposium 26 Nov 2021 2:00pm - 7:00pm, Online, via Zoom |
| Workshops and Symposia: 2020-21 |
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‘The Right to Science’ Symposium 7 Oct 2020 - 8 Oct 2020 All day, Online |
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(In)visible Labour: Knowledge Production in Twentieth-Century Science 22 Feb 2021 4:00pm - 5:30pm, Online, via Zoom |
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‘Toward a Non-Hegemonic Sociology’ Symposium 28 Jun 2021 - 29 Jun 2021 All day, Online, via Zoom |
| Workshops and Symposia: 2019-20 |
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‘Leonardo da Vinci: Imagining Futures’ Symposium 25 Oct 2019 9:00am - 5:00pm, Rooms SG1 & SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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‘The Right to Science’ Symposium 1 Apr 2020 - 3 Apr 2020 All day, Room S1, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
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‘Agrarian Relations: Towards an Epistemology of Land’ Symposium 18 May 2020 - 19 May 2020 All day, |
| Workshops and Symposia: 2018-19 |
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‘Norming Knowledges’ Ideas Lab 29 Jan 2019 8:30am - 5:30pm, 1 Newnham Terrace, Darwin College, Cambridge, CB3 9EU |
'Agrarian Orders and Transformations' Research Group
The aim of the Agrarian Orders and Transformations research group is to foster cross-disciplinary discussions and collaborations on the present and future of agrarian life, with a special interest in patterns of continuity and rupture that characterise current and emerging trends in our food-production systems, the social organisation of agricultural life, and the normative orders that underscore and drive its regulation and transformation.
More information about future activities and opportunities will be made available soon.
Convenor: Inanna Hamati-Ataya
'Finding the Future' Research Group
More information about Finding the Future activities and opportunities will be made available soon.
Convenors:
'Global Epistemological Politics of Religion' Research Group
The Global Epistemological Politics of Religion research group explores concepts and debates informing contemporary social and political theory and practice concerning the dynamics and relations between religion, politics and order. Through the detailed study of various cases we explore the histories and political logics of various attempts to conceptualise and institutionalise social, religious and cultural difference, including the rule of law, the practices of knowledge and non-knowledge, and the recognition and protection of religious minorities. Questions to be discussed include: How does modern law and political practice regulate the spaces within which individuals and groups live out their cultural and religious lives? What are the histories and politics of modern constructs of religion in relation to the nation, technology and across different networks? The group is explicitly interdisciplinary drawing social and political theory, global politics, anthropology, history, and sociology of religion, and law.
Convenor:
| Global epistemological politics of religion 2023 sessions |
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Global epistemological politics of religion 2023: session one 7 Feb 2023 13:00 - 14:30, Online Elina Hartikainen (University of Helsinki) |
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Global epistemological politics of religion 2023: session two 9 Mar 2023 14:00 - 15:30, Online Elayne Oliphant |
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Global epistemological politics of religion 2023: session three 18 Apr 2023 14:00 - 15:30, Online Iza Hussin (Cambridge) |
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Global epistemological politics of religion 2023: session four 16 May 2023 17:00 - 18:30, Online Joseph Blankholm (UC Santa Barbara) |
'Neurodivergent Socialities' Undergraduate Network
The Neurodivergent Socialities research group is an interdisciplinary undergraduate student network.
The neurodiversity movement encompasses those with conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, OCD, etc., as well as (more recently and somewhat controversially) those with chronic mental health conditions such as bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, long-term depression, and others. It tends to be radically accepting of self-diagnoses and critical of conventional psychopathological frameworks. Mainstream Western discourse around neurodiversity frames neurodivergent experiences in highly medicalised terms of individual deficit. This precludes the exploration of neurodiversity as a normal aspect of human cognitive variation and as fundamentally embedded in social and political structures. Whilst remaining cognisant of the challenges of disability, this research group will contribute to de-pathologising neurodiversity by investigating questions around how neurodivergent states afford particular ways of relating to the world.
This research network will aim to start with relatively informal discussions and then move on to reading groups, workshops, blog posts, speaker events, and other initiatives as the group deems appropriate. An indicative (but not required or expected) reading list is available via our website.
Convenor:
Inika Murkumbi
'The Right to Science' Research Group
We all have a human right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress (the Right to Science [RtS]). The right has its origins in Article 27 of the United Nation’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted in the wake of World War II. In 1966, the UN turned these commitments into binding obligations under international law. The implication is that, just as governments are expected to respect the rights to, say, freedom of speech and due process, so they must also adopt measures to respect and ensure the RtS. The existence of this right is important for researchers and society. It adds a legal and moral dimension to a range of fundamental issues, including scientific freedom, funding, and policy, as well as access to data, materials, and knowledge. Yet, despite its potential for furthering science and human rights causes, the RtS has not received the attention it deserves.
This research group will work towards:
1) a deeper understanding of the right to science, both legally and conceptually
2) activating the right to science in practice
3) making the right to science a better known human right.
Activities planned at this early stage include monthly zoom meetings and book launches for our Cambridge University edited volume, The Right to Science: Then and Now which will be published in late November or early December.
Convenors:
Helle Porsdam | Sebastian Porsdam Mann | Christine Mitchell
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From theory to practice: the 2022 UNESCO Brief on the right to science and COVID-19 14 Nov 2022 14:00 - 16:30, Online |
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The Right to Science and Africa 26 Jan 2023 13:00 - 16:30, Online gloknos symposium |
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The UDHR at 75: The Right to Science at UNESCO 4 May 2023 15:00 - 16:40, Online Event hosted by Helle Porsdam and guest speaker Gabriela Ramos |
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Book launch – ‘The Right to Science: Then and Now’ 3 Dec 2021 16:00 - 18:00, Online |
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A right to science versus a communal right to religion 26 Apr 2022 15:00, Online |
'Science and its Others' Research Group
The Science and its Others: Histories of Ethno-Science group studies the changing relationship between scientific knowledge and what is variously called local, ‘indigenous’ or ‘native’ knowledges. Our starting point is the eighteenth-century travel instructions that asked naturalists to routinely record indigenous names and knowledge. We explore economic botany, ethnography and other strands of nineteenth-century natural history relying on systematic surveys of national and colonial territories, and the eventual consolidation of ethno-disciplines in the twentieth century. We are interested in the putative shifts towards increasingly global awareness and calls for the incorporation of ‘traditional’ knowledge in political and scientific discourses. Fundamental questions we want to address include: under which historical and epistemological conditions did indigenous forms of knowledge undergo a revaluation by western scientists – from the colonial and derogative notion of ‘savage’ to what is now called ‘ethnoscience’? What forms of credit and intellectual property organised the intersection of indigenous and scientific knowledge? What consequences, if any, did these intersections have for the demarcation between science and non-science? And what impact, in turn, did the exposure to ‘science’ have on the self-understanding and identity of local knowledge communities?
Convenors:
Harriet Mercer | Staffan Müller-Wille | Raphael Uchôa
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POSTPONED | Historical sources of the ethno-sciences: session one 1 Feb 2023 15:00 - 16:00, postponed Staffan Müller-Wille: Extracts from Linnaeus’s Lapland journal (Iter lapponicum, 1732) |
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POSTPONED | Historical sources of the ethno-sciences: session two 15 Feb 2023 15:00 - 16:00, postponed Harriet Mercer: William Dawes and the Eora Language Notebooks of the Late Eighteenth Century |
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POSTPONED | Historical sources of the ethno-sciences: session three 1 Mar 2023 15:00 - 16:00, Postponed Paula López-Caballero: The Sol Tax expedition to Zinacantán, Chiapas (Mexico, 1942–3) |
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POSTPONED | Historical sources of the ethno-sciences: session four 15 Mar 2023 15:00 - 16:00, Online Raphael Uchôa: Extracts from Richard Spruce’s field notes on his travel to the Amazon basin (1849–1864) |
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Historical sources of the ethno-sciences: session one 26 Apr 2023 15:00 - 16:00, Online, via Zoom Staffan Müller-Wille: Extracts from Linnaeus’s Lapland journal (Iter lapponicum, 1732) |
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Historical sources of the ethno-sciences: session two 3 May 2023 15:00 - 16:00, Online Harriet Mercer: William Dawes and the Eora Language Notebooks of the Late Eighteenth Century |
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Historical sources of the ethno-sciences: session three 10 May 2023 15:00 - 16:00, Online, via Zoom Paula López-Caballero: The Sol Tax expedition to Zinacantán, Chiapas (Mexico, 1942–3) |
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Historical sources of the ethno-sciences: session four 17 May 2023 15:00 - 16:00, Online Raphael Uchôa: Extracts from Richard Spruce’s field notes on his travel to the Amazon basin (1849–1864) |
'Taste and Knowledge' Research Group
The Taste and Knowledge research group seeks to understand the strange fate of taste as a form of knowledge production intermingled with value judgments.
Taste is central to a wide range of practices used to assay objects and materials for quality and value, from the taste panels used by food producers to the judgments performed by experts in gemstones, wine, art, and coffee. Indeed, taste plays a central but often unrecognised role in the modern economy, determining the value and profitability of countless products.
At one and the same time, however, taste is widely regarded as an intrinsically unreliable way of knowing about the world, subject to the vagaries of both individual taste and individual bodies. Across a huge range of fields, from the sciences to the most obvious objects of taste judgment – food criticism and production – taste is regarded with suspicion. Widespread efforts are afoot to replace or supplement it with apparently more objective practices of quantification and measurement.
We want to understand how and why taste came to have this ambiguous status – at once central to our understanding of quality and value, but at the same time maligned as subjective and inaccurate.
Convenors:
Marieke Hendriksen | Alex Wragge-Morley
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Senses of taste 24 Nov 2021 4:15pm - 5:30pm, Online |
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Taste and value 1 Dec 2021 4:00pm - 5:00pm, Online |
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Qualifying taste 23 Feb 2022 16:00-17:30, Online |
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POSTPONED Training taste 23 Mar 2022 16:00 - 17:30, Online |
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Training taste 6 Apr 2022 16:00 - 17:30, Online |
Conferences
Recasting the political: perspectives from deep history
3 – 4 July 2023 at Darwin College
The Team
gloknos Core Team
- Director Inanna Hamati-Ataya
- Research Project Administrator Zeynep Kacmaz-Milne
- Research Associate Felix Anderl (left August 2020)
- Research Associate Matt Holmes (left February 2022)
gloknos is home to a wide variety of associate members, institutional partners, research group leaders, and other affiliates – you can see their profiles via our website. We are also grateful for the careful guidance and support of our Advisory Board members.
