Dr Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis, University of Twente Ustinov College
October – December 2013
Dr Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis is Associate Professor in the History of Science and Technology at the University of Twente. He studies the early modern roots of science and technology, in particular the role and meaning of the mathematical sciences. In 2006 he received an NWO/VIDI grant for a project on the cultural history of mathematization in the early modern period, The Uses of Mathematics in the Dutch Republic, where he investigated how various mathematical practices gave shape to early modern society. Recently, his perspective has expanded towards early modern cultures of innovation with a particular interest in the way Enlightenment collectioneurs, savants, artists and printers developed new conceptions of light and vision.
Dr Dijksterhuis trained as an engineer and after completing his Master’s degree he became a teacher in senior secondary education. He completed his PhD in 1999 and after a period as curator at the Leiden Boerhaave Museum he returned to the University of Twente. He is a member of the department of Science, Technology and Policy Studies (STePS). The University of Twente has a strong social science profile and he is involved in several educational programs and is a staff member of ATLAS, the Academy of Technology and Liberal Arts & Sciences, an interdisciplinary programme for outstanding students, integrating social and technical perspectives into a new engineering approach.
Dr Dijksterhuis’s publications range from early modern optical theory and instruments, to humanist mathematics and cultures of mathematization in Golden Age fortification, city planning, and education. His recent research engages with 18th-century pursuits of putting natural materials to use, including the manipulation of light with powerful burning lenses and color printing techniques. Such practices gave rise to new languages of light, closely connected to the geometrization of space in Enlightenment mathematics and philosophy, and connect with recent developments like pulse shaped imagining. While at Durham IAS, Dr Dijksterhuis will develop his research on 18th-century optics, juxtaposing English and continental pursuits. He hopes to benefit from other fields in the Light programme, mirroring historical questions to scientific, artistic, and philosophical engagements.
Dr Tim Edensor, Manchester Metropolitan University Ustinov College January – March 2014
Tim Edensor, Reader in Cultural Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University, has contributed to five areas of scholarship: geographies of tourism, national identity, industrial ruins and urban materiality, geographies of rhythm and spaces of illumination and darkness.
His research monograph, Tourists at the Taj (1998), critiques the ethnocentrism, over-generalisation and functionalism of theories of tourism. He is also editor of the interdisciplinary journal, Tourist Studies.
His second book, National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (2002) focusses upon the increasing centrality of everyday life and popular culture in the representations, practices and consumption of national identity. His book Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality (2005), and other publications have initiated much of the current fascination with the study of ruins.
Dr Edensor edited Geographies of Rhythm (2010) and published articles about tourism, commuting and walking rhythm, exploring the relationship between rhythmic temporalities and place, the rhythms of ‘nature’ and the synchronicities of social life. He has also co-edited Spaces of Vernacular Creativity: Rethinking the Cultural Economy (2009), and A World of Cities: Urban Theory Beyond the West (2011).
More recently, he has researched spaces of illumination and darkness, focusing on contested aesthetics, vernacular creativities, the potentialities of darkness, and the effects of artistic lighting works and events. These ideas are discussed in publications on Christmas lights (Sociology 2009), the apprehension of dark space (Social and Cultural Geography 2013; Urban Studies 2014), and an art exhibition review (The Senses and Society 2013).
At the IAS, Dr Edensor will investigate the effects and potentialities of festivals of illumination, the ways in which they can enrich a sense of place, co-produce atmospheres, defamiliarise and re-enchant the habitually apprehended spaces, and expand the grammar of urban design through creative experimentation.
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