Marianne Klemun – författare

This collection focuses on different expeditions and their role in the process of knowledge acquisition from the eighteenth century onwards. It investigates various forms of scientific practice conducted during, after and before expeditions, and it places this discussion into the scientific context of experiments. In treating expeditions as experiments in a heuristic sense, we also propose that the expedition is a variation on the laboratory in which different practices can be conducted and where the transformation of uncertain into certain knowledge is tested. The experimental positioning of the expedition brings together an ensemble of techniques, strategies, material agents and social actors, and illuminates the steps leading from observation to facts and documentation. The chapters show the variety of scientific interests that motivated expeditions with their focus on natural history, geology, ichthyology, botany, zoology, helminthology, speleology, physical anthropology, oceanography, meteorology and magnetism.  

The book sets itself the task of capturing, in a concise form, the 650-year history of the University of Vienna, as seen through a number of different windows. It understands itself as a fresh new model of science communication: interesting, readable but at the same time highly reflected. The figures in the action are freely invented, but the context in which they live is analysed from a serious and research-related viewpoint. In 14 stages, the stories focus on the students’ perspective, the different modes of knowledge acquisition over the course of 650 years, and the spatial changes to the university within the city of Vienna. They examine the complexity of learning beyond the traditional history of institutions, personnel and academic disciplines, and reflect critically on important developments of the university.