Personalia
Simona Valeriani, born in Genova, Italy, in 1972. Ph.D. from Technische Universität Berlin, Germany. Postgraduate Tutor in the History of Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum/ Royal College of Arts.
Theme Group Fellow (WITHDRAWN)
Embodied Knowledge Between Centres and Peripheries
Research Question
The project will look at how Knowledge circulated between major urban centres, provincial towns and periferies in the Early modern Britain. In particular it will ask what role did artefacts play in the processes of recording observations, storing and circulating information and knowledge? What was the relationship between knowledge embodied in objects, immages and the written word?
Project Description
Recent scholarship in the history of science has discussed the mutual influences between visual representation and the pursuit of scientific knowledge in the European Early Modern period, while –at the same time- discussing ways in which ‘centres of accumulation’ related to peripheries. The research I will carry out at NIAS will take up the challenge of examining the role of 3D representations in this process. Analysing a number of specific urban ‘spaces’ in 17th century Britain such as the drawing offices of architects and ship wrights, the repository of the Royal Society, and rising professional and academic institutions, it will investigates the significance of the third dimension and the reasoning behind the early modern people’s choice of a specific ‘embodiment’ for their thoughts.
Selected Publications
1) Kirchendächer in Rom – Capriate Ecclesiae, Berliner Beiträge zur Bauforschung und Denkmalpflege III, Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, 2006.
2) Lovers, Gentlemen and learned men. Architecture and knowledge in 16th and 17th century England, in Prospectus— “The Varied Role of the Amateur in Early Modern Europe”, special Issue of Nuncius (V. Keller und L. Skogh eds.), forthcoming 2016.
3) “Intellectual Networks and Exchange of Useful and Reliable Knowledge: Case Studies of Early Modern Japan and Europe”, Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung (with Mina Ishizu, forthcoming 2015).