Scientific knowledge is always embodied and performed by scholars and scientists who enact a specific scientific identity or a scientific persona. In order to be acknowledged as a (truthful, good) scientist one has to incorporate culturally anchored, sometimes very old, sometimes wholly new, roles and repertoires that signify reliability and trustworthiness. Some of these repertoires are specific to disciplinary and epistemic cultures. Others are connected to wider historical and cultural patterns. Leading a socially restrained life or showing signs of the distracted and other worldly  professor are just two of a great variety of repertoires that make up scientific personae. In some contexts a moustache and beard and certainly also spectacles had and have signifying power in respect of scientific authority.

 

For women scientists (and other outsiders in science) it seems to have been more difficult than for men to perform these personae and to build up reputation and prestige and so gain recognition in a scientific context, implying epistemological as well as well as career problems.  One of the reasons for this seems to be that, historically science was embodied mainly by men, and therefore traditionally most of the roles and repertoires that engendered trustworthiness and reliability were connotated as male (white and upper/middle class). Given the enduring dominance of gendered social relations, new ways of being a scholar or a scientist are still intertwined with norms and behaviors regulating masculinity. Being white, male and upper/middle class in itself facilitated (and facilitate) the producers of knowledge to be seen and heard, and to be believed.

 

 In project SPICE, we approach the history of scholarly, scientific or academic persona formation in and through specific constitutive experiences while taking into account the impact of the wider social and cultural context of gender, race and class. Examples of such constitutive experiences are selection processes for funding, travel experience or participation in scholarly, scientific or professional networks. In the first, gatekeepers define what a good scientist looks like (in various ways), thereby impacting on scientific identity. In the second, the encounter with other scientific cultures and identities may influence the formation or change of scientific persona, while networks may act as platforms of the cultural exchange of norms and models of scientific identity.

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Was it possible for women to adapt scientific personae such as the heroic scientist that had been built on European, upper middle class and masculine modes of being, such as the traveler explorer, the sportive mountain climber or the arctic discoverer? What were the dangers for women of opting for ‘masculine repertoires’ and how did they confront these, what roles were successfully appropriated by women and how? Are there examples of women (or other outsiders) who did not succeed in forging a reliable and convincing persona? What role did networks  play in the journeys of women scientists – both in a figurative and a more literal sense? But also networks in the form of scientific organizations and funding agencies like the International Federation of University Women, the Belgian American Educational Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation. How did these institutions play a role in the construction of scientific personae?

 

The project combines comparative and transnational history with discourse and rhetorical analysis, and analysis of visual representations. Basic sourses include funding agencies´policy documents, scholarship applications and travel reports, personal correspondence, published and unpublished travel letters, accounts of international conference visits, photographic reports and portrayals by scientists.

 

 SPICE is funded by the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Memorial Fund, with co-funding from the University of Stockholm, University of Groningen and KU Leuven.

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