The international conference Science in the Field: People, Practices and Environments in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, taking place at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) on 14–15 June 2027, invites contributions exploring the practices, people, and environments of scientific fieldwork from the nineteenth century onwards. We particularly welcome papers examining the production of scientific knowledge in Central Asia, the Caucasus, Siberia, and other regions of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, with attention to questions of expertise, labour, gender, and the relationship between science and state power.
Submission deadline: 1 December 2026.
Science in the Field: People, Practices and Environments in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union
From the nineteenth century onward, the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union were sites of extensive scientific fieldwork. Geologists surveyed mountains and mineral deposits; botanists and soil scientists studied vegetation and soils; meteorologists, hydrologists and glaciologists established observation networks; ethnographers and archaeologists travelled, collected, and excavated; and physicians and epidemiologists conducted medical and anti-epidemic expeditions. These activities connected field sites to universities, academies, laboratories, museums, administrative institutions, and projects of economic and environmental transformation.
Since the landmark Science in the Field edited by Henrika Kuklick and Robert E. Kohler (Osiris, 1996), historians of science have increasingly approached the field not simply as a place for collecting material, but as a distinctive site of knowledge production. Subsequent scholarship has examined how place, mobility, material practices, logistics, and encounters with different environments and communities shaped scientific knowledge itself (Kohler, Landscapes and Labscapes, 2002; “What Is a Field?”, Isis, 2022). The extensive field sciences of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union offer particularly rich ground for exploring these questions, but their histories have often remained separated by discipline, region, and political period.
This conference seeks to bring these histories into conversation. We are interested in how field science was organized and practised; how expeditions were connected to universities, laboratories, museums, observatories, and permanent stations; how observations and specimens became maps, classifications, datasets, and recommendations; and how practical projects of resource exploitation, agriculture, public health, territorial administration, and environmental transformation shaped scientific research.
We also invite papers examining the people and encounters of field science. Expeditions and stations depended upon technicians, students, guides, translators, medical personnel, local officials, and inhabitants as well as recognized scientists. Fieldwork could bring different forms of expertise into cooperation or conflict, including encounters between local environmental or medical knowledge and academic science. Questions of gender, labour, expertise, and scientific authority are therefore particularly welcome.
The conference encompasses the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, with particular interest in Central Asia, the Caucasus, Siberia, and other regions often positioned as scientific peripheries. Contributions may address the earth and environmental sciences, geography, botany and zoology, archaeology and ethnography, medicine and epidemiology, and related fields. We particularly welcome historical research grounded in primary sources and contributions exploring continuities and transformations across 1917 or connections between imperial/Soviet and international field sciences.
Practical information
The conference will take place at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, on 14–15 June 2027. Conference languages are English and Russian; papers may be presented in either language. Presentations will be approximately 20 minutes.
Please submit a title, abstract of up to 300 words, brief indication of the principal primary sources, and short biographical note (max. 100 words) by 1 December 2026 to Katja Doose katja.doose@univ-lyon2.fr and Oybek Makhmudov oybek81@yandex.ru
The organizers will provide three nights of accommodation in Fribourg (13–16 June).
Limited travel funding is available, with priority given to doctoral and early-career researchers and participants without access to institutional travel funds. Applicants requiring travel support should indicate this in their application and specify whether full or partial support is needed.
The organizers can provide official invitation letters for visa applications where necessary.
The conference is organized as the final conference of the SEQUAL project “Myths of equality: the gendered history of science in Central Asia, 1870-1970s” (2024-2027, funded by the SNSF grant no. 223625), University of Fribourg.
Organising committee:
Christine Bichsel (University of Fribourg)
Katja Doose (Université Lumière Lyon 2)
Nargiza Kenzhaeva (State Pedagogical University of Chirchik)
Oybek Makhmudov (State Pedagogical University of Chirchik)