Research Fellowship in Cambridge

Thanks to a Leibniz Association ‘Value of the Past’ research grant, I had the opportunity to be a visiting scholar at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Cambridge, UK (18 November to 13 December 2024).

Project title: Circulation of Scientific Instruments in Southeastern Europe (late 18th–early 19th c.)

In this project, I focused on acquiring a deeper understanding of the circulation practices of scientific instruments, by examining the mentalities of individual actors involved and the related appropriation processes. In particular, I researched the usage of scientific instruments in the Greek lands – then part of the Ottoman Empire – during the last decades of the eighteenth century and in the beginning of the nineteenth. The instruments originated primarily from England, France, and the Habsburg Empire. Various stakeholders, including Greek scholars and merchants as well as foreign travellers, acquired and introduced these instruments to this geographical space for a variety of reasons, such as education, practical uses in the maritime trade or in travel, and entertainment. The circulation and use of scientific instruments was a novel practice embedded in a period of financial prosperity and intellectual growth that was later termed Greek (or Neohellenic, or Balkan) Enlightenment. This phenomenon was directly influenced by the wider philosophical and intellectual movement in eighteenth-century Western Europe and is considered a local manifestation of the overall European Enlightenment. The Greek Enlightenment encompassed the belief in rationalism, self-improvement, and the pursuit of happiness; the usage of scientific instruments contributed to these themes.