Knowledge Practices
In this group we address the question how knowledge is legitimized: who produces knowledge, how is knowledge embodied and transmitted, in which groups and what institutional contexts? We study the boundaries between expertise and lay knowledge and explore how knowledge relates to power, gender, class, race, and disability. Among the methods we use are network analysis, discourse analysis and praxiography. We apply theoretical concepts such as epistemic virtues and centre-periphery models.
Examples
Research projects of our group include :
- the project Skillnet by Dirk van Miert on the Republic of Letters as an early modern knowledge society
- the project Force by Willemijn Ruberg on forensic expertise in twentieth-century Europe
- research by Pim Huijnen on the modern circulation of knowledge on food between science and popular culture, as well as its colonial imagination, in the Netherlands
The Knowledge Practices group has strong ties with the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities at Utrecht University.