Elizabeth Neswald

Dr. Neswald is a historian of science and technology. She teaches introductory courses on science from Ancient Greece to the atom bomb and on technology since the Industrial Revolution as well as advanced courses on Science, Technology and Gender and the Material Culture of Science and Technology.

Before coming to Brock she taught at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National University of Ireland at Galway. She received her doctoral degree from the Humboldt University in Berlin.

She is the author of two books: Medien-Theologie. Das Werk Vilém Flussers (Böhlau Verlag, 1998) and Thermodynamik als kultureller Kampfplatz. Zur Faszinationsgeschichte der Entropie, 1850-1915 (Rombach, 2006) and numerous essays on thermodynamics, the history of nutrition physiology and the history of popular science in nineteenth-century Ireland.

 

Research

Dr. Neswald’s research focuses on the history of thermodynamics and nutrition physiology in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her current project investigates the interplay of statistics and thermodynamics in the formulation of modern nutrition theories and practices and their effect on perceptions of the working body. She is currently completing a project begun at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science on the international laboratory travels of the American nutrition physiologist Francis Gano Benedict and the development of an international community in metabolism research.

Recent and forthcoming publications (selection)

Books

Thermodynamik als kultureller Kampfplatz. Eine Faszinationsgeschichte der Entropie 1850-1915, Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach 2006.

Medien-Theologie. Das Werk Vilém Flussers, Cologne/Weimar: Böhlau 1998.

Articles and Book Chapters

“Saving the World in an Age of Entropy. John Tyndall and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.” In Bernard Lightman and Michael Reidy (eds.), John Tyndall and Nineteenth-Century Science, London: Pickering and Chatto (forthcoming 2013).

“Strategies of International Community-Building in Early 20^th-century Metabolism Research: The Foreign Laboratory Visits of Francis Gano Benedict,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 43 (2013), 1-40.

“Kapitalistische Kalorien. Energie und Ernährungsökonomien um die Jahrhundert-wende”, in Barbara Gronau (ed.), Szenarien der Energie. Zur Ästhetik und Wissenschaft des Immateriellen, Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag 2012, 87-109.

“Eigenwillige Objekte und widerspenstige Dinge. Das Experimentieren mit Lebendigem in der Ernährungsphysiologie”, in Affektive Dinge. Objektberührungen in Wissenschaft und Kunst, Natascha Adamowsky, Robert Felfe, Marco Formisano, Georg Toepfer and Kirsten Wagner (eds.), Göttingen: Wallstein 2011, 51-79.

“Reading Instruments. Objects, Texts and Museums.” In collaboration with Katherine Anderson, Melanie Frappier and Henry Trim, Science & Education (online 25 September 2011; print forthcoming).

“Asserting Medical Identities in mid-nineteenth-century provincial Ireland: The Case of the Water-Cure in Cork”, in Juliana Adelman and Eadaoin Agnew (eds.), Science and Technology in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, Dublin: Four Courts Press 2011, 32-47.

“An American Physiologist Abroad: Francis Gano Benedict’s European Tours”, The Virtual Laboratory 2010. http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/references?id=art77

“‘The Benefits of a Mechanics’ Institute and the Blessing of Temperance.’ Science and Temperance in 1840s Ireland,” in Social History of Alcohol and Drugs 22 (2008), 209-227.

 

Recent Presentations

Heat Engines, Chemical Factories and other Industrial Bodies. Guest lecture to be held at the conference “Ma(n)chines”, Berlin, December 2013.

“Creating Commensurability in Early Nutrition Science and Metabolism Studies”. Presented at the conference “Dimensions of Measurement”, Bielefeld, March 2013.

“Agency, Resistance and Accommodation: Experimenting on and with Humans and Animals in Nutrition Physiology”. Presented at the SLSA meeting, Milwaukee, September 2012.

“Mapping Human Metabolic Diversity: Racial Metabolism Studies in the 1920s-30s”. Presented at the joint meeting of the HSS, BSHS and CSHPS, Philadelphia, July 2012.

“Cosmic Cycles and Cosmic Collisions.” Presented at the 9^th Michael P. Malone Symposium: John Tyndall and Nineteenth-Century Science, Bozeman, Montana, June 2012.

“The Statistical Bodies of Early Nutrition Science.” Presented at the HSS meeting, Cleveland, November 2011.

 “To build the best of all possible labs: Francis Gano Benedict’s European Tours and the Carnegie Nutrition Laboratory.” Presented at the Laboratory History Conference, Leuven, June 2011.

“Zur Faszinationsgeschichte der Entropie.” Opening keynote lecture for the performance festival “Entropia”, Berlin, November 2010.