The Winners
The Prize Committee received 19 applications for this edition: 12 in English, 6 in French, and 1 in German from 11 counties (Australia, China, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, The Netherlands, UK, USA).
The Maurice Daumas Prize Committee signalized a significative number of papers as contributors to originality, relevance of the content, interesting figures, clear writing, relevant conclusions and contribution for the discipline. The panel pointed out many papers well researched, structured and written, richly argued, good theoretical framework based on an impressive corpus of sources and published in respected journals. Some of them represent original and consistent research, based on the range of various materials and evidence. From the general perspective the papers are good enough to being considered, and their contribution for the History of Technology is estimated as high.
The range of topics presented focuses on and covers several areas such as: transnational technological networks; relationship between government and private enterprise, early modern history; history, current events and future of wave energy; the emergence of the notion of timetable and delay during a long 18th century in France, Switzerland and England, i.e. before the advent of the railways; the urban land market, transport networks, drinking water supply or waste water disposal; the study of the musical instruments industry in the course of digitalization; the early history of phage-typing and its meaning for bacteriological diagnosis in Germany; archeological methods in the history of transportation; approach to the analysis of the chemical spaces using mathematical tools.
The Committee selected the article by Luke Keogh, Senior Curator at the National Wool Museum in Geelong, Australia, entitled “The Wardian Case: Environmental Histories of a Box for Moving Plants” and published in 2019 in Environment and History, 25, 219-244. DOI: 10.3197/096734018X15217309861531
Luke Keogh is a curator and historian interested in the global movement of plants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among his many awards and prizes is the Sargent Award from the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. Currently he is senior curator at the National Wool Museum in Geelong, Australia, and an honorary research fellow at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. In 2020, he was an also fellow of the 4A Lab, Berlin, an innovative humanities research lab supported by the Max Planck Institute for Art History in Florence and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. His book The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World has been published by the University of Chicago Press in August 2020.
His historical specialties and interests are environmental history (He was trained in environmental science), the history of science and technology and Australian history. Three overarching concerns influence his work: plants, History in the Anthropocene and Curatorial ways of seeing history.
Luke Keogh´s article is a very interesting and engaging analysis of the role of artifacts, in particular the Wardian case, in making humans into a force of botanic change and global migration. Through a complex analysis of a seemingly simple artifact and the historiography around it, the author identifies an unsuspected driver of world history in the global age. The article provides a good attempt to put a story of the Wardian box into the discourse on mobility and Anthropocene. It´s original and well written. At a largest scope, the colonial, economic, scientific and the technical issues are smartly defined. Methodologies and approaches from the history of technology heavily influenced the Wardian case project. The paper was inspired by the “use-based history” of both Ruth Oldenziel and Mikael Hard, Consumers, Tinkerers and Rebels: The People Who Shaped Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013) and also David Edgerton, The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 (London: Profile, 2006). Although Ward’s story is certainly one of “innovation” by taking a longer and global view the story of the Wardian case is also one of use and practice.
The committee awarded also two special mentions:
The 2nd Prize goes to Marion Weckerle who is a PhD candidate in History of technology at the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. In her thesis, she works on the history of seaplanes from the 1910s (when they were invented) to the 1930s, exploring the processes of invention and innovation in this field, and the interactions between the military and civilian technological systems and uses of this particular type of aircraft.
At the same time, being a clarinet player trained at the Conservatoire of Strasbourg and a baroque recorder player, she became interested in early music, organology and their various approaches by scholars and musicians. This interest led her to do research on the history of the clarinet, regarding the evolution of the playing techniques and the links to the evolution of the instrument making, which is the theme of her article. Research on music from the perspective of a historian of technology has also allowed her to take part in a pluridisciplinary research project at the Paris Music Museum, on the history of pianoforte strings.
Marion Weckerle ´s paper “Facture instrumentale et gestes : éléments pour la restitution historiquement informée du jeu de la clarinette en musique ancienne”, published in 2019 in Cahiers François Viète, Série III – N° 6 , 109-131, is a highly original contribution to three fields: the history of technology, the history of music, and historical informed interpretation. The novelty lies precisely in the interdisciplinary intersection between these three fields, which could become a landmark for further collaborations between them. Particularly bold is the aim at improving current practice in musical interpretation employing up-to-date conceptual tools in the history of technology, which enable the author to see the historical archives and artifacts with the eyes of the historian of technology, the ears of the historian of music, and the hands and lungs of the clarinet interpreter. Weckerle does a very convincing and systematic analysis of its sources.
The 3rd Prize goes to Jenny Bulstrode is a Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College of University of Cambridge, who is carrying out postdoctoral research on climate change in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, HPS, with a particular focus on globalisation and fossil capital. Most recently Jenny was awarded the American Academy of Arts and Science 2018 Sarton Prize for the History of Science. Prior to this award she held research fellowships at the Greenwich National Maritime Museum and the Royal Observatory, respectively considering cultural and technical histories of metal. Her recently completed doctoral research in HPS Cambridge, charted the global role of geomagnetic research in the age of reform and Atlantic revolution. In July 2020 she joins Science and Technology Studies, University College London as Lecturer in History of Science and Technology.
Jenny Bulstrode´s paper “Riotous assemblage and the materials of regulation”, published in 2018 in the Journal History of Science, 56 (3) 278–313, is impressively researched, a profound study of the glass and its role in the wide context of standards, fiscal policy, and market regulations. The author sets intriguing research questions and welcomes to follow the (hi)story of the artifacts supporting it with various visual materials and data. The article is exemplary of Jenny’s interest in using materials and processes to connect detailed microhistories with global consequences and universal claims in the study of art, industry, and science.