Workshop Colonial and Postcolonial Technoscience

We invite researchers from across the world and from multiple disciplinary fields to share and discuss new insights on the making, circulation and accumulation of colonial and postcolonial technoscience. 

This workshop is embedded in the history network of the four technical universities in The Netherlands (4TU). However, we encourage contributions that put technoscience in a wider institutional perspective, addressing the role of other research institutes and organisations, as well as work and careers of scientists, technicians or other individuals, in the creation, transmission, and transformation of technoscience within and across colonial and postcolonial settings. 

This workshop has a dual goal of exploring how Dutch technoscience was shaped by colonial and postcolonial experiences and, secondly, what similarities and differences can be detected in how colonial and postcolonial technoscience developed in a wider range of settings, institutionally and geographically. 

The workshop hopes to explore common themes and linkages across Dutch technical universities. For two of them, Delft and Wageningen, colonial and postcolonial settings were formational. The other two, Eindhoven and Twente, entered the international scenery in the 1960s when colonialism was contracting and new international dynamics such as development aid and the Cold War co-produced the colonial and postcolonial. 

We use the term technoscience here to include a broad understanding of knowledge development for and within settings where humans transformed material environments and ecologies. In colonial  and postcolonial settings such activities coincided with foreign invasion, domination, resistance and avoidance. We encourage contributions that highlight the reciprocities and permeabilities in technological encounters between (formerly) colonized societies and the Western powers. 

Education plays a key role in reproducing particular forms of technoscience and preparing students for the social and cultural contexts in which careers will unfold. Teaching repertoires at universities, colleges and schools thus are important entry points for understanding how particular forms of colonial and postcolonial technoscience are confirmed or challenged. 

We welcome applications that relate to these themes. We particularly encourage interdisciplinary perspectives and contributions that connect historical research with contemporary attempts to reassemble global technoscience.

The workshop will consist of short presentations and discussions aimed at supporting individual contributions as well as identifying cross-cutting themes and unexplored topics. We have a limited budget to support attendance of (young) scholars without institutional support 

Please submit an abstract of ca. 300 words and a short CV by 15 September 2026 to Cecilia.Battich@wur.nl or Harro.Maat@wur.nl . 

The workshop is made possible by the scholarly network 4TU History of Technology