Centers and peripheries revisited

step and the mainstream historiography of science

Agustí Nieto-Galan

pp. 69-84

in: Theodore Arabatzis, Jürgen Renn, Ana Simoes (eds), Relocating the history of science, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

This chapter describes the history of the international research group "Science and Technology in the European Periphery" (STEP). It analyses STEP's genuine academic culture, its complex relation with the mainstream historiography of science and the crucial role that Professor Kostas Gavroglu has played in the making of the whole project, from its foundation in Barcelona in 1999 to its further intellectual, academic growth. It also describes in detail STEP's main achievements through conferences and publications on subjects such as scientific travels, scientific textbooks and their circulation, national historiographies of science, science popularization in the periphery, scientific controversies, with the most recent meetings covering different topics organized into thematic sessions. Taking "centers' and "peripheries' as flexible and dynamic categories, the STEP research agenda has enriched the study of circulation of knowledge in the past and shall also contribute to a new multicultural approach to a truly European history of science in the future.

Cited authors

Gavroglu Kostas