The Winners
Laudatio
This year’s edition of the ICOHTEC Turriano Prize was marked by the covid pandemic. Clearly, the academic life had slowed down during the year 2021 and less PhD theses had been defended. Of the nominations we had received, only 12 were eligible for assessment, about a third of the average number.
However, the lower number of works we received did not mean lower quality than previous years. Our jury of five, consisting of Darina Martykánová (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Irina Gouzévitch (École Normale Supérieure, France), Tiina Männistö-Funk (University of Turku, Finland), Klaus Staubermann (ICOM, Germany), Jacopo Pessina (Università Pisa, Italy) and myself, would like to stress the high quality of the great part of the works received, by early-career scholars from different corners of the world, including Chile, Sweden, France or Pakistan. Thematic diversity of the books and theses is noteworthy: from clocks and planes to abortion pills and news aggregators. So is the time span, though most of the works focus on the 20th century, some deal with 17th and 18th centuries and two, in particular, stand out for their long-term perspective of analysis. After a complex evaluation process and discussion within the jury, we have decided to grant the 2022 ICOHTEC Turriano Prize to two candidates, Waqar L. Zaidi and Sébastien Pautet. We have also decided to grant the Honourable Mention to Duygu Yildirim.
Waqar L. Zaidi of Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan, has presented a published book titled Technological Internationalism and World Order. Aviation, Atomic Energy, and the Search for International Peace, 1920–1950. It is a great example of a thesis successfully transformed into a book, to-the-point, easy to read and, at the same time, extremely solid in its primary sources, methodological approach and analysis. In his analysis of how liberal internationalism shaped the development of technology and infrastructure in areas such as aviation and atomic energy, Zaidi masterfully inscribes top-level history of technology into the most dynamic debates in political history and in the field of International Relations. It is rare that a historian in the early stage of his career can so skilfully contribute to the booming, but too-often-disconnected fields of history of technology and the history of international relations. His is a study of a failure which is in the heart of an ongoing challenge: to guarantee an international control of potentially dangerous technologies while, at the same time, taking into account the interests of different countries.
The other winner is Sébastien Pautet for his PhD dissertation Le defi chonois des Lumières. Savoirs techniques et économie politique en France au temps des circulations sino-européennes (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles), defended at the Université Paris VII – Didérot, France. Pautt’s work is an extraordinary study of the exchanges between China and Europe in a period when the empire of the Ming and the Qing became a model of expertise and a source of inspiration in technical knowledge, skills and production. The author shows how French authorities sought for all kinds of technical knowledge that they considered useful for the wealth of the country, which they perceived as closely linked to the strength and stability of political power. Pautet sheds light on how the members of the French ruling elites strove to mobilise European actors in China, particularly the Jesuits, to identify and transfer the means of improving crafts and production of goods. He argues that this was to “serve as alternative to the ways of development preferred by the officials during the first industrialisation». We would like to stress Pautet’s contribution to the history of technological transfers and his capacity to mobilise an in-depth knowledge of the different aspects of European and Chinese history in order to shed light on why and how knowledge and technology travelled and were (re)produced and the role played by political institutions in this process.
The jury has decided to grant the honourable mention to Duygu Yildirim for her PhD dissertation The Age of the Perplexed: Translating nature and bodies between the Ottoman Empire and Europe, 1650-1730, defended at the European University Institute in Florence. Her work surpasses the traditional understanding of the field of history of technology, but not that of techniques as a polysemic concept. Stressing the perplexity as the driving force of the Ottoman “translations” of European medical knowledge and natural history, she not only puts forward another strong case for the analytical category of “hybridity”, but she also skilfully juxtaposes the material realities with their translation into writing.
PRIZE COMMITTEE
Dr. Darina Martykánová (Chairperson)
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Departamento de Historia Contemporánea
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Campus de Cantoblanco
28049 – Madrid
Spain
darina.martykanov[at]uam.es
Dr. Irina Gouzévitch
Centre Maurice Halbwachs
École Normale Supérieure
48, boulevard Jourdan
75014 Paris
France
irina.gouzevitch[at]ens.fr
Dr. Klaus Staubermann
ICOM Germany
In der Halde 1
14159 Berlin
Germany
k.b.staubermann[at]gmail.com
Dr. Tiina Männistö-Funk
School of History, Culture and Arts Studies
University of Turku
Turku
Finland
tiiman[at]utu.fi
Dr. Jacopo Pessina
Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge
Via Pasquale Paoli, 15
56126 Pisa
Italy
japessina[at]tiscali.it