Dr Franziska Kohlt
@frankendodo
Historian& Sociologist of Science at King's College, London | Formerly HPS Leeds, York SATSU & Inaugural USC Carrollian Fellow | Tutor Oxford ContEd | Keynote Speaker, Alice in Wonderland Expert & Polymath | Erdős–Bacon No 8
Dagmar Schaefer kicking off the Plenary panel on "Time" with the problems and potential of comparison in the history of science #hss-bshs 1/x
Well here's the news: Very excited to be joining King's College London as Research Fellow in Historical Climatology& Glaciology to work on historical- indigenous& colonial -narratives of the Himalayan glacier regions to design effective climate interventions through storytelling. Absolute dream job!
Things have been a little stressful recently, and yet I have somehow managed to pull together 2 forthcoming journal articles! Both deal with the politics of knowledge literature for popular audiences, amid 19c tensions about who gets to participate in the making of scientific knowledge-and why 📚 🔭 🐛
To celebrate the publication of 'Science, Religion and the Human Future' you can grab a limited time 30% discount - so get our new book for £13.99 ($17.50) here: global.oup.com/academic/pro...
Just arrived in the mail: 'Science, Religion, and the Human Future' (OUP 2026) - from our @eclasproject.bsky.social, on the history of conflict narratives in Science and Religion, and their present ramifications. Now available as e-book & in print: global.oup.com/academic/pro... 1/2
270-page academic monographs for £150 - and a peer-reviewer recently responded to a book proposal of mine why I am not pitching the book to a "better" publisher (who would give me fewer pages at £110 purchase price more). How did we get here?
Great news for everyone working on cultural entomology - Call for Papers from the @cam.ac.uk Entomological Society & @royentsoc.bsky.social - “The good, the bad, and the monstrous: Insects in mythology, literature and media" Deadline for Abstracts: 20 October '25 Symposium Date: 20 November '25
Really excited to be returning to Amsterdam as Keynote Speaker for the Capegemini Executive Congress to reflect on lessons, in the many fast-moving debates we can learn from the history of Artificial Intelligence& Automata, with Industry& Academic leaders in the field www.sogeti.com/summit2025/s...
Like many others, I will be deleting my academia [dot] edu account this morning in light of their change of policy.
Honestly, writing about 19th century women scientists is never not a ride.
New extinction theory just dropped 🦤 🦖 @morethanadodo.bsky.social
...particularly ironic, as this project uses innovative #AI & large language models, compiling a "code cook book" to be used& refined in under-graduate teaching, for students to apply the code in their projects on underrepresented individuals in science (in partnership w Science Stories& Wikimedia)
And PLOT TWIST, if you're reading along: DOGE terminated funding for this research project. Which sits so uncomfortably alongside the experience of 19th century women, as recalled by Harriet Martineau, outlined in my preceding paper.
Mary, Kristen& Bethany now speaking abt their #digitalhumanities project "No longer at the margins"- amplifying women's voices in the archive & the collab nature of science, dovetailing w my archive-based study of the barely known history of the the Soc for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge's women
Examples of early matriarchal pre-histories - origins of weaving in the cradle, mother's sewing - to make children value textile industry
First Speaker and MC - Elizabeth Hoiem - Speaking about the "Women Writers who Invented Deep History for Child Readers"
Busy day today, teaching two seminars on Through the Looking Glass at @oxlifelonglearning.bsky.social at my old college @brasenoseoxford.bsky.social in the morning, and now off to talk about 19th Century "Ladywriters" in science at Rochester, NY @sharpnews.bsky.social (remotely!) #SHARP2025
Great to be back at York today for the Anna Letitia Barbauld at 200 Conference at Kings Manor. Thrilled about papers on science & children's literature, of course.
Absolutely loved working on the Magical Mechanical Museum exhibition & book at Compton Verney (-- even though that was also my first taste of seeing all my work attributed to the more senior, male collaborators on the project in media & academic reviews 🙃) /2 www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
Can't wait for Keynote #2 this year, on how Automata History helps us think through challenges of AI applications in Society 🤖 I'll revisit questions on automation & society, intelligence & culture I first explored in both my BBC "In Our Time" & Curatorial debuts ➡️ /1 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...