Workshop: "Geographies of Knowledge and Extraction"

Date: 12 December 2025, 10:30–16:30
Location: English Park, 6-3025 (The Rausing Room)
Type: Workshop
Organiser: Department of History of Science and Ideas
Contact person: Petter Hellström

Workshop at the Department of History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University.

Vue prise à Kengisbruk, le 21 septembre 1839. Dessiné par [Barthélemy] Lauvergne. In: Paul Gaimard, ed., Voyages en Scandinavie, en Laponie, au Spitzberg et aux Feroë pendant les années 1838, 1839 et 1840 sur la corvette La Recherche. Atlas historique et pittoresque. Vol. 2, Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1852, pl. 169. Image courtesy of Museiverket, CC-BY.

Abstract:

This workshop explores the entangled geographies of knowledge production and resource extraction in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It asks how scientific knowledge production was impacted by the imbrication of scientific surveying and extractive practices at the hands of European states and empires, and, conversely, how extractive ventures were reconfigured through association with organised knowledge production in fields such as chemistry, geography/land surveying, geology/mineralogy, and natural history. A central aim of the workshop is to foreground the spatial and/or geographical dimensions of such entanglements, thus inviting reflection on how knowledge production and extractive practices were situated within particular local settings (whether metropolitan, colonial, or provincial), which could both facilitate and/or impede the movement of knowledge and resources in space, especially during periods of warfare or in response to changing national and/or regional frameworks. The workshop will explore these themes by drawing on ongoing research into the prospecting for, extraction of, and processing of natural materials (iron ore, mineral coal) as well as the recycling of previously extracted materials (copper) in the Nordic Countries, France, Russia, and the USA.

Organisers: Niels Josva Balling (Aarhus), Petter Hellström (Uppsala), Hanna Hodacs (Uppsala). Supported by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

Please reach out to us if you are interested in attending.