‘Migration – Innovation: Human Mobility & Technological Innovation in History’ at the German Museum of Technology in Berlin
On the 4th and 5th of April we will host the ‘Migration – Innovation: Human Mobility & Technological Innovation in History’ conference at the German Museum of Technology in Berlin.
The conference and subsequent edited volume will bring together a range of scholars who investigate the crucial role that migrants played in the technological development of early modernity. We are very excited to welcome so many people to the conference and are looking forward to many productive discussions on technological innovation, migration, and museum representation with people from a diverse range of universities and museums.
Throughout the two days we will explore what allowed for successful immigration, technological innovation, and knowledge transfer through a number of academic panels. In these panels the participants will discuss, for example, which factors contributed to the integration of migrants? Which to the success of their outputs and to the adaptation and diffusion of their skills? Alongside these panels we will host a roundtable of museum experts who will explore how museums work to represent these people and their circumstances through their collections and museum activities. By bringing these two strands together we aim to promote closer collaboration between academic researchers and museum professionals.
As embodied skill is such an important part of these discussions, the participants will also be given a chance to test their own skills through workshops led by the museum in paper and jewellery making.
Through the discussions over the two days both during the panels and roundtables, as well as during the dinner in the museum, we hope to encourage new approaches to the understanding and representation of the link between migration and innovation and promote collaborative projects.
Conference Programme
Day 1 – April 4th 2024
8:45-9:00 Registration, Welcome, and Coffee
9:00-9:30 Opening Address
9:30-11:00 Keynote Panel: Methods and Approaches
11:00-11:30 Coffee
11:30-13:00 Academic Session II: Success and Failure
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:00-15:30 Academic Session III: Extracting Environments
15:30-17:00 Museum Workshops
18:00 Dinner at the Museum Restaurant
Day 2 – April 5th 2024
9:00-10:30 Academic Session IV: Institutions and Networks
10:30-11:00 Coffee
11:00-12:30 Academic Session V: PoWs and Coerced Migration
12:30-13:30 Lunch
13:30-14:45 Academic Session VI: Politics, Power, and Migration
15:00-16:00 Museum Round Table
16:00-16:30 Coffee
16:30-18:00 Concluding Remarks & Discussion
Day 1 – April 4th 2024
Opening Address and Welcome
Joachim Breuninger (Director, German Museum of Technology / Deutsches Technikmuseum [DTM])
Claudia Schuster (Curator of Shipping and Navigation, DTM) and Astrid Venn (Curator of Aerospace, DTM)
Felicia Gottmann (PI Migration–Adaptation–Innovation Project, Northumbria University, Newcastle)
Keynote Panel: Methods and Approaches
Chair: Felicia Gottman (Northumbria University)
Liliane Hilaire-Pérez (University Paris Cité / EHESS): ‘How Knowledge moves’? Towards a Decentered History of Technical Mobility, c. 18th-20th
Francesca Bray (University of Edinburgh): Remaking Chinese Tea in British India: Some Thoughts on Mapping Migrant Skills and Innovation
Academic Session II: Success and Failure
Chair: Floris van Swet (Northumbria University)
Jutta Wimmler and Lukas Wissel (University of Bonn): Lacking Experts, Lacking Workers. (Coerced) Migrants and the Failed Dutch Attempt to Establish Plantations on the Early Eighteenth-century Gold Coast
Rémi Dewière (Northumbria University, University of Naples L'Orientale): A Migrant-Entrepreneur’s Experience: French Cannon Experts in Algiers, 1772-1775
John Styles (University of Hertfordshire, Victoria and Albert Museum): Holker and Kay: Perils and Possibilities of Technological Migration
Academic Session III: Extracting Environments
Chair: Rémi Dewière (Northumbria University, University of Naples L'Orientale)
Floris van Swet (Northumbria University): Migrants in Making: Japanese Migrants and Technological Matrices in Early Modern Maritime Asia
Kris E. Lane (Tulane University): American Tech Comes Home: Alvaro Alonso Barba's Search for Spanish Mines in the 1650s
Philip Hahn (Universität des Saarlands): Saxons on Sumatra, or: Why Technology Transfer Failed in 17th Century Dutch Colonial Mining
Day 2 – April 5th 2024
Academic Session IV: Institutions and Networks
Chair: Floris van Swet (Northumbria University)
Elizabeth Lambourn (De Montfort University): Migration, Adaptation, Innovation before 1500: Second Thoughts on Surviving Documents from a Metals Workshop in 12th Century Kerala
Oliver Gunning (Northumbria University): Artisanal Mobility in Glassmaking: The Movement of Knowledge and People in Eighteenth Century Britain
José Nieto Sanchéz (Autonomous University of Madrid), Maarten Prak (Utrecht University) and Patrick Wallis (London School of Economics): Migrating Craft Apprentices in Europe, 17th–18th Centuries
Academic Session V: PoWs and Coerced Migration
Chair: Oliver Gunning (Northumbria University)
Siyen Fei (University of Pennsylvania): Lost People on the Ming Frontiers: Captivity and Labor Acquisition in Early Modern China
Lisa Hellman (Lund University): Innovation or Immobilisation: Migrants and Prisoners in the Central Asian Borderlands
Gül Şen (University of Bonn): The Margrave and his “Turkish” Captives: Unfree Labor and Knowledge Transfer in Early Modern Central Europe
Academic Session VI: Politics, Power, and Migration
Chair: Rémi Dewière (Northumbria University, University of Naples L'Orientale)
Chun Xu (Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin): Making a Familiar Landscape: Agricultural Technologies and Settler Colonies in Ming Dynasty Guizhou
Jenny Bulstrode (University College London): The Cogs and the Wheels: The Intangible Heritage of Black Precision Engineers in 18th C Jamaica and the Untouchable Status of British Industrial Triumphalism
Round Table: Migration and Minorities in Museums: Outreach, Collaboration, Co-Creation – Experiences and Best Practice
Chair: Felicia Gottmann (PI, Migration–Adaptation–Innovation Project, Northumbria University Newcastle)
Participants:
Rachel Barclay (Senior Curator, Oriental Museum, Durham)
Ben Jones (Project Coordinator Shipley Art Gallery, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, Gateshead)
Danielle Kuijten (Director, Heritage Concepting and Imagine IC, Amsterdam)
Fabian Schnedler (School Programmes and School Collaboration, Jewish Museum Berlin)
Jane Whittaker (Collections Manager, Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle)
Concluding Remarks
Simon Schaffer (University of Cambridge)