People
Principal Investigator
Dr Michael Barany
Dr Barany is Senior Lecturer in the History of Science at the University of Edinburgh. He studies the relationship between abstract knowledge and the modern world. Combining historical, sociological, and other methods, he investigates how people produce such knowledge; how it derives from their social, political, and other contexts; and how they use that knowledge to shape those contexts in turn.
He is assisted by Tycho the golden retriever, whose interests include snoozing, treats, and pats.
Postdoctoral Research Fellows
Dr J.P. Ascher
Dr Ascher is Research Fellow for the history of global mathematics and its cross-historical influences in the history of science and the history of knowledge. Broadly he studies bibliographical methods along with early-modern to digital knowledge dissemination by examining paperwork history, the history of books in society, and the technology of printing and digital transmission. His most recent work examines the early-modern history of learned printing legally authorized by the Royal Society of London’s administrative records, placing both the records and the printing into historical context. He is currently working on born-translated mathematics and its relationship to post-war globalized bookselling.
Dr Jan Vrhovski
Dr Vrhovski is Research Fellow at the department of Science, Technology, and Innovation Studies, School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include intellectual history of modern China, history of analytic philosophy, mathematical logic, history and philosophy of science in China, and international history of mathematics.
Research Assistants
Alkisti Kallinikou
Alkisti is a PhD researcher at the University of Edinburgh. Grounded in an interdisciplinary approach, her doctoral work combines literary studies and psychology to investigate representations of exceptional intelligence in children’s and young adult literature. Her research interests include the intersections of literature and science, especially quantum mechanics, astronomy, and mathematics, storytelling in science, fantasy literature, nonfiction, and differential psychology.
Bo van Broekhoven
Bo van Broekhoven is a part time PhD student in History at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the activities of the Hartlib circle in seventeenth-century Britain and Germany, specifically on the way that practices connected to care of souls influenced projects for the universal reform of society. Her field of interest includes early modern intellectual history, history of science, history of emotion, history of education, and religious history.