Researchers of the Laboratory participate in the SHOT Annual Meeting

The Annual Meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) has been held in Milano and was co-organized by the SHOT and the National Museum of Science and Technology named after Leonardo da Vinci.

Elena Kochetkova organized the session titled "Socialist Design and Consumer Technologies during the Cold War", where she also made a presentation on the biography of milk packaging and symbolic meanings of milk in the late Soviet era. The paper was connected to the research within the framework of the project on the history of materiality of the Soviet society, supported by the Russian Science Foundation https://spb.hse.ru/humart/chr/eth/news/294180222.html

Julia Lajus, a leading researcher and head of the Laboratory, was a commentator for this session. She emphasized the importance of research on both production and consumption in socialism, as well as sharpened several other issues, such as the importance of transfers and approvals of technologies in the field of consumption, the importance of discussions on the specifics of the consumer society in the USSR, among others.

Senior researcher Alexandra Bekasova delivered the paper "Mediating between Producers and Consumers: “The Cement Question”, Testing Technologies, and Emergence of Material Scientists’ Expert Community in Late Imperial Russia" dedicated to the  development of cement production technologies and the role of experts in these processes in Russia in the late imperial period. 

Pavel Demchenko, the manager of the Laboratory and postgraduate student of the Department of History, presented the paper "People of ports: norms and practices in the Russian Baltic ports at the XVIII century", in which he spoke about the peculiarities of development of infrastructure and technological innovations in marine field and their importance for the functioning of sea ports in Russia in the 18th century. Both papers were presented in the framework of the session devoted to the history of Russian innovations in the global context.

Also,Yadhav Deerpaul, Master student of the Program in Applied and Interdisciplinary history, took part in the conference. He presented a paper "The Challenges of Constructing Railways in British Mauritius: Carving the Landscape through the Conflicting Appropriation of Technologies during the Period 1858-1904" which was based on his Master thesis. Yadhav was nominated as a Robinson Prize Candidate: the Prize is given to the best paper delivered by presenter who participated in the SHOT conference for the first time.