News

The project (Al-)Chemical Space In Silico (AXIS), led by Dr. Guillermo Restrepo (ISoS, Bielefeld University) and Dr. Sarah Lang (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), has received funding of $400,000 over three years from Schmidt Sciences. Selected from more than 500 applications from 42 countries, AXIS is one of 19 projects chosen for this year’s awards from Schmidt Sciences' Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI). AXIS will use AI to rebuild and translate historical alchemical recipe collections. Selected particularly significant recipes will be tested in the laboratory.

The project aims to shed new light on the history of chemistry before 1800 and make its tools and data openly available for future research.

To learn more, read the full press release:

https://aktuell.uni-bielefeld.de/2026/10/15/vergessenes-chemiewissen-mit-ki-aufspueren/

As part of the upcoming lecture series on interdisciplinarity in scientific research, jointly organized by the ISoS and ZiF at Bielefeld University, we are pleased to welcome Professor Melinda Fagan (University of Utah) to Bielefeld in November. Following her lecture on November 3, we are delighted to host a workshop with Melinda Fagan on November 4, from 09:30 to 12:30 in the X-building on the university campus.

The workshop will take the form of discussion-based sessions built around selected readings from her recent book, Explanatory Particularism in Scientific Practice (OUP, 2025).

If you are interested in joining the workshop, please email isos@uni-bielefeld.de to receive the readings and further organizational information.

Following his nomination by ALLEA (All European Academies) as an expert for the Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA), Prof. Dr. Straßheim, ISoS Co-Director, was invited to join a working group and contribute to the evidence review „Science and Democracy“. SAPEA is part of the European Commission’s Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM). Together with the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors, it provides independent scientific advice to European Commissioners to support their decision-making. SAPEA also works on raising awareness of scientific advice and evidence in policymaking and on stimulating debate in Europe about this issues. At its core the Evidence Review Report is supposed to give answers to pressing questions: In a time of societal, technological, geopolitical, climatic and environmental change how can science strengthen Europe’s democratic functioning and resilience? How can science-informed policymaking help societies think critically, deliberate openly, and reach consensus on complex decisions? 

ISoS Co-Director Carsten Reinhardt will give a keynote talk at the symposium of the upcoming Freedom of Research Summit 2026, taking place on 4 and 5 November in Aachen. The summit features a festive evening event, a symposium, and a stand-up night, bringing together researchers, policymakers, representatives from business, media, and culture, as well as the wider public.

The event is organized jointly by the Charlemagne Prize Foundation as well as RWTH Aachen University’s Knowledge Hub and Käte Hamburger Kolleg: Cultures of Research (co/re). 

For the programme and further information, visit: https://for-summit.eu.

On 8 July 2026, ISoS hosted a Work‑in‑Progress Workshop with Nancy Cartwright (UC San Diego and Durham University) as part of its lecture series on scientific concepts. Following Cartwright’s lecture “In Defense of Ambiguity” on the previous day, around 19 participants from across Germany came together to discuss current work in the philosophy of science on scientific concepts. The workshop was structured into two sessions. In the first session, Philipp Haueis (Bielefeld University) gave a talk on patchwork concepts in scientific explanation, followed by discussion among all participants. In the second session, the group engaged with Cartwright’s recent critique of the concepts of objectivity, bias, and rigor in evidence-based medicine. As a highlight of this semester’s ISoS Lectures series, the workshop offered a great opportunity to explore scientific concepts as a shared concern across various science‑reflective disciplines, as well as, more generally, to stimulate exchange on current work within and beyond ISoS.

The field of science studies has long examined the conditions, forms, and implications of interdisciplinary work. Historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science address questions such as what distinguishes interdisciplinary from multidisciplinary research, how knowledge is integrated across disciplinary boundaries, how interdisciplinary fields emerge and stabilize, how researchers navigate conflicting methods, standards, and epistemic cultures in collaborative settings, and whether interdisciplinarity is an epistemic necessity or primarily a policy-driven ideal.

To bring together science-reflective topics as well as practical experiences from interdisciplinary research projects, funding organizations, and institutes dedicated to interdisciplinary research, the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) and the Institute for Studies of Science (ISoS) have jointly organized a lecture series, titled "Interdisciplinarity in Scientific Research: Perspectives from Practice and Science Studies".

You can now find the full programme and further details here.

Everyone interested is warmly invited to attend the lectures and join the conversation.

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Guillermo Restrepo as a new member of ISoS and as the holder of a DFG "Eigene Stelle" (Individual Research Grant) to conduct research at the intersection of history, data science, and chemistry.

Guillermo joins us from the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig, where he has led a project on the computational history of chemistry. By analysing vast historical datasets (scientific publications, chemical substances, and synthesis methods) using mathematical and computational tools, he uncovers hidden patterns in the evolution of chemical knowledge. His new DFG project, titled "Material, Social and Semiotic Dimensions of the Discovery of Substances over the History of Chemistry", explores how we understand the evolution of chemical knowledge as a dynamic interplay of people, materials, and language.

At the heart of Guillermo’s research is a bold question: How did the chemical space, the vast collection of known substances and reactions, evolve over the past two centuries? His project uses large-scale digital data from databases like Reaxys, Scopus, and OpenAlex to trace the historical expansion of chemistry through a unique triad of material, social, and semiotic dimensions. The material dimension involves the substances, reactions, and technologies that shaped chemical practice. The social dimension is based on institutions, nations, and networks that drove discovery. The semiotic dimension incorporates the language, journals, patents, and naming conventions that communicated and codified chemical knowledge.

By analysing millions of chemical records from 1800 to 2023, Guillermo aims to uncover patterns that reveal how wars, economic crises, and political shifts left their mark on chemistry, and how the very structure of the discipline evolved over time.

Guillermo’s background is interdisciplinary. Trained as a chemist at the Universidad Industrial de Santander (Colombia), he holds a MSc in Chemistry from the same university and a PhD in mathematical chemistry from Bayreuth University (Germany) and has spent years bridging the gap between the humanities and the sciences. He held postdoctoral positions at Bayreuth University in mathematics and at Texas A&M University-Galveston in mathematical chemistry. He also held an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship to conduct research on the computational history of chemistry at Leipzig University, before moving to the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig, where he conducted research for about a decade.

His work has been published in multidisciplinary journals like Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Proceedings of the Royal Society A, and in specialised journals in the sciences and the humanities such as Nature Chemistry, and Angewandte Chemie, and in Ambix, the leading journal in the history of chemistry.

Welcome, Guillermo, and great to have you on board!

A few day ago, a new special issue in "Animal History" (University of California Press) on historical human-technology-animal relations was published!

Most contributions to the special issue are now available online.

The issue grew out of the international workshop "From Passive Livestock to Untamed Beings: Reanimating Animals in the History of Technology," held at the Technical University of Berlin in 2024.

In his introductory essay, “Toward an Animated History of Technology,” ISoS member Christian Zumbrägel argues for a more systematic integration of animals into the history of technology and proposes a conceptual framework for understanding how animals have enabled, shaped, challenged, and sometimes disrupted technological actions in the past. Read the introduction here: https://doi.org/10.1525/ah.2026.134

Explore the special issue and read the exciting papers by Vanessa Bateman, Corinna Röver, Christoph Borbach, and Daniel Bowman!

As part of this semester's ISoS Lecture series on Scientific Concepts, ISoS is very pleased to welcome Nancy Cartwright (Durham University & UC San Diego) to Bielefeld and warmly invites participation in the following two events:

ISoS Lecture with Nancy Cartwright

7 July 2026, 16:15–17:45

Talk: In Defense of Ambiguity

Venue: Lecture Hall X‑E0‑001, X‑Building, Bielefeld University

The lecture is open to all; no registration required.

Work‑in‑Progress Workshop with Nancy Cartwright

8 July 2026, 09:00–13:00

Program and further information: https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/zwe/isos/events/lectures/workshop/ 

Registration for the workshop is required due to limited space. If you would like to take part, please register until 30 June via isos@uni-bielefeld.de. Readings will be circulated beforehand.

ISoS is delighted to welcome Pravajya Pandey who recently joined the Department of Philosophy at Bielefeld University as a doctoral researcher in the MSCA Doctoral Network TRANSCEND under the supervision of Lara Keuck.

Before joining TRANSCEND, Pravajya completed both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Philosophy at the University of Delhi. Her academic background has broadly centered on philosophy of science, medicine, ethics, and mental health, with a particular interest in how medical and social classifications shape lived experience, self-understanding, and questions of epistemic justice. Much of her recent work has focused on ADHD, neurodiversity, institutional epistemology, and philosophy of psychiatry, especially in relation to gendered experiences and forms of epistemic marginalization. She is also interested in broader questions concerning translational medicine, patient perspectives in biomedical research, and the relationship between conceptual analysis and empirical scientific practice.

Alongside these themes, Pravajya has also worked on topics in AI ethics, political philosophy, and contemporary Indian philosophy. Her doctoral project in TRANSCEND examines “scoping methods” in translational biomedical research — methods that evaluate how experimental models and interventions are matched to real-world diseases and patient-relevant outcomes. More specifically, Pravajya is interested in how these methods can be philosophically and conceptually analyzed in order to better understand the relationship between biomedical models, disease classifications, and patient experience, particularly in the context of complex and heterogeneous medical conditions.

As part of the TRANSCEND network, Pravajya looks forward to engaging with interdisciplinary discussions across philosophy, medicine, and science studies, and to contributing to the broader research environment at ISoS.

For more information on TRANSCEND and Pravajya's project: 

https://biomed.au.dk/transcend-network/about  

https://biomed.au.dk/transcend-network/work-packages/focusing-on-patient-outcomes/reframing-autism-a-historical-perspective-on-shifting-models-and-meanings