Exploring new perspectives on the material culture of expeditionary science

October 18-19, 2024 at the Technical University Braunschweig

Thursday October 17
19:00 Pre-Conference Dinner

Friday October 18
9:00-10:30 Welcome and Introduction (Eike-Christian Heine & Sarah Pickmann)
10:30-11:00 Coffee break
11:00-12:00 Driving expeditions
Christian Kehrt: Wegener’s motor sledge
Sarah Pickmann: The Belgica Sled. Object Lives and Afterlives
12:00-13:30 Lunch
13:30-14:30 Plants as actors
Daniel Jankowski: Exploring the “Quellerflächen”. Salt marsh plants as epistemic objects in embankment discussions in the 1860s
Jordan Bimm: Mars Jars. Aspirational Objects of Expedition
14:30-15:00 Coffee Break
15:00-16:00 Everyday material culture: umbrellas and chairs
Delphine Froment: The Umbrella and the Missionary: Johannes Rebmann’s First Trip to Kilimanjaro in 1848, a Non-Geographical Expedition?
Lena Filzen, “The White Man Sitting on his Throne”. John Hanning Speke’s Iron Camp-Chair and its Diplomatic Importance for the Search for the Source of the Nile
16:00-16:30 Coffee Break
16:30-17:00 Punch-cards
Martin Weiss, Expeditions at the dawn of the era of computing. THISBE’s portable card puncher
17:00-18:00 Discussion
19:00 Dinner

Saturday October 19
9:00-9:30 Recap and discussion
9:30-11:00 Invisible labor made visible
Eike-Christian Heine: Sponges and archaeology
Grace King: Settler science and the Indigenous souvenir trade. Recovering a piece of scrimshaw from the 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition
Clemens Janke: Skipped. The Epistemic Productivity of Overlooked Pages in Travel Diaries as a Multitool for Expeditionary Practice. Ewald Banse’s Journey from Baghdad to Istanbul in 1908.
11:00-11:30 Coffee Break
11:30-12:30 Discussion & closing remarks