UCL Anthropology

New Materials, New Technologies: Innovation, Future and Society

Joint University College London / Kings College London seminar series supported by the Economic and Social Research Council

SEMINAR ON SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE PROTOTYPE
11th February 2008
Summaries

SEMINAR ON NEW MATERIALS
12th May 2008
Summaries

SEMINAR ON NEW TECHNOLOGIES
22nd September 2008
Summaries

SEMINAR ON INNOVATION, FUTURE AND SOCIETY
3rd November 2008
Summaries

This research seminar series brings together researchers and practitioners working in the field of material innovation who would not normally have the opportunity to meet due to disciplinary divisions. This network encompasses anthropologists, engineers, material scientists, product designers, archivists, historians, philosophers, curators and artists.

The creation of new materials and new technologies is assigned huge and unprecedented importance in the knowledge economy of the twenty-first century. Changing practices and perceptions are complemented by innovations in technology are set to call into question assumptions around the nature of transmission that have formed the core of Euro-American social and economic thought over the past three hundred years. By debating the new material relationship between people and things as it emerges from within cutting industrial research and design, the research seminar series will establish the horizon of concerns and interests across stake holder groups, and assist in mapping the larger order social and cultural issues at stake to 'feed-back' reflexively into the design, implementation, uptake of this new technology.

Various themes and debates will be addressed in four seminars accordingly:

The first seminar The Social History of the Prototype will examine the social history of the prototype in order to draw out the differences represented by present innovations in technology and manufacture and explore the earlier 18th and 19th century origins and contexts of development underlying current innovations.
The second seminar New Materials will bring together historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, practicing artists, and scientists to discuss the nature of the perception of materials in society and the relation of materials innovation to long-term change building on themes from the previous seminar.
These themes will then be taken up in relation to radical changes in technology and manufacture in the third seminar on New Technologies.
The final seminar Innovation, Future and Society will round up the themes of the previous three sessions to delineate the new emerging horizons of understanding that are challenging long held Euro-American understandings of objects in our social worlds.

Schedule

Session 1 - Social History of the Prototype
Monday 11th February 2008, 1.30-6.30pm at UCL

Session 2 - New Materials
Monday 12th May 2008, 1.30-6.30pm at Kings

Session 3 - New Technologies
Monday 22nd September 2008, 1.30-6.30pm at the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, 1 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5DB - Council Room on the first floor

Session 4 - Innovation, Future and Society
Monday 3rd November 2008, 1pm-7pm at UCL