About the lecture
Seen to be at the vanguard of the STEM to STEAM movement, Science Gallery is the world’s first university-linked network dedicated to public engagement with science and art with galleries in Atlanta, Dublin, London, Melbourne, and Monterrary.
Science Gallery Bengaluru is the first such gallery of the network in Asia with the mandate to deliver a global mission.
In this talk, Jahnavi Phalkey will introduce the form and structure of the new institution, and explore with us the ideas that inform the shape of Science Gallery Bengaluru through her journey to answer one question: what does it mean to go beyond science communication towards an engagement with science, and what does history of science have to do with it?
About the speaker
Jahnavi Phalkey is a historian of science and technology. She is the Founding Director of Science Gallery Bengaluru. The 140,000 sq. ft. gallery is among the most ambitious public engagement projects in India and seeks to ‘bring science back into culture’. Prior to founding Asia’s first Science Gallery, Phalkey was full time faculty at King's College London and has also been a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Berlin.
She was an external curator at the Science Museum London, and has been a Scholar-in-Residence at the Deutsches Museum, Munich. She is the author of Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth Century India and co-edited Science of Giants: China and India in the Twentieth Century. She is also director and producer of the documentary film, Cyclotron. Jahnavi was awarded the Infosys Prize in Humanities (2023).
About the History of Ideas lunch seminar
The History of Ideas lunch seminar is a forum for students of the history of ideas, staff and others who are interested. At the meetings, current research by historians of ideas inside or outside UiO is presented. Between five and eight lunch seminars are arranged each semester, the seminars take place on Fridays from 12 to 13 and they are open to everyone.