research: Seminar
Immersed in science
Ilaria Ampollini
The seminar will explore the relationship between immersivity and the circulation of scientific knowledge outside of learned circuits (popularisation, education, forms of entertainment). Although optical devices, such as megascopes, magic lanterns or panoramas, and the ways in which they were used to project “scientific” contents are constantly mentioned in the media archaeology literature, no study has yet examined the extent to which they contributed to the dissemination of science. Nor is there any historical reconstruction that attempts to see them from the perspective of the history of science education and popularisation. What I am trying to do is to draw up such a history, based on a large corpus of primary sources (in progress) and covering a period from 1750 to about 1900. Among the questions that underlie my research, two are especially relevant. First, what can the relationship between immersivity and the circulation of scientific knowledge tell us about the modalities of investigation, analysis and representation developed over time by men of science? Second, how did immersive modalities relate to other modalities (and models) of representation, such as miniaturisation, manipulation or “emersivity”?
Biography
Ilaria Ampollini
Ilaria Ampollini got her Master degree in Philosophical Sciences (2011) from the University of Bologna and her PhD in Historical Studies (2016) from the University of Trento. Her research interests focus on the history of science and the history of science popularization, with particular reference to the XVIIth and early XIXth century. Her first monograph (Cronaca di una cometa non annunciata. Astronomia e comunicazione della scienza nel Settecento. Rome: Carocci, 2019), focused on a panic episode that occurred in Paris in 1773, generated by a work by the astronomer J. Lalande about the probability of impact between Earth and comets. After working in the field of sociology of science, in 2017 she got a grant (292K) from the Autonomous Province of Trento for a three-year project on the communication of scientific research. In 2020 she obtained a Labex Hastec post-doc scholarship, thanks to which she conducted a research project at the Institut d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine / Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, devoted to science-themed board and card games printed between Eighteenth and Nineteenth century. Her works deal with the history of science popularization, the visual and material history of science and, more in general with the multiple aspects linked to the public dimension of science and the circulation of knowledge.
research: seminar
Immersed in science
Ilaria Ampollini
The seminar will explore the relationship between immersivity and the circulation of scientific knowledge outside of learned circuits (popularisation, education, forms of entertainment). Although optical devices, such as megascopes, magic lanterns or panoramas, and the ways in which they were used to project “scientific” contents are constantly mentioned in the media archaeology literature, no study has yet examined the extent to which they contributed to the dissemination of science. Nor is there any historical reconstruction that attempts to see them from the perspective of the history of science education and popularisation. What I am trying to do is to draw up such a history, based on a large corpus of primary sources (in progress) and covering a period from 1750 to about 1900. Among the questions that underlie my research, two are especially relevant. First, what can the relationship between immersivity and the circulation of scientific knowledge tell us about the modalities of investigation, analysis and representation developed over time by men of science? Second, how did immersive modalities relate to other modalities (and models) of representation, such as miniaturisation, manipulation or “emersivity”?