A project on science and activism: Politics of grassroots knowledge
MEMBERS
RESEARCH TEAM Jaume Valentines (PI) Marco Armiero Agustí Nieto-Galan Jaume Sastre
COMMUNICATION & SUPPORT Laia Torres Casas
WORK TEAM Andrea Álvarez Laorden Max Bautista Perpinyà Miquel Carandell Baruzzi Roger Fernàndez i Tudela Judit Gil-Farrero Inês Gomes Santiago Gorostiza Carolina Granado Torres Laia Iturrizaga Zurita Ana Macaya Andrés Anyely Marín Cisneros Luisa Coelho Sousa
COLLABORATORS & PARTNERS Lara Talavera Guarda Rios Group
Research team
Jaume Valentines (PI)
Associate professor of history of science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Previously he was a researcher fellow and adjunct professor at the Nova School of Science and Technology in Lisbon for eight years. He has also been a visiting scholar in Mexico, London, Berlin and Geneva. As historian of technology, his focus has been the twentieth-century Iberian Peninsula and his main interest is to understand how political authority and expert authority are entangled and resisted. His last works deal with technology and revolution, the politics of cycling, and the entanglement between the social construction of technology and the social destruction of technology. He is interested in crossing memories, useful arts and fine arts to imagine futures based on mutual aid, and in creating spaces to bring academics, activists and local communities together. Valentine’s research outputs
Marco Armiero
ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB-iHC). Since 2019 I am the president of the European Society for Environmental History. Although rooted in that discipline, I have developed a transdisciplinary research agenda blending environmental history with political ecology and environmental humanities. In 2013 I became the director of the Environmental Humanities Laboratory in Stockholm. My research clusters around three themes: environmental justice; migrations and the environment; and fascism and nature. Methodologically, I avoid any dichotomy between nature and society. Thematically, from toxicity to fascism, from migration to mountain communities, my research focuses on processes of expropriations and imposition of expert knowledge and the resistance of subaltern communities. I teach courses on environmental history, political ecology, and environmental humanities.
Agustí Nieto-Galan
Full professor of history of science and ICREA Academia Fellow (2009, 2018 & 2023) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He has written widely on the history of chemistry, the history of science communication, and the urban history of science (18th–20th centuries). In this context, his books include Science in the public sphere (Routledge, 2016); Barcelona: An urban history of science and modernity (1888-1929) (Routledge, 2017) and The land of the hunger artists (Cambridge University Press, 2023). He has also analysed the relationship between science and politics in the twentieth century, with works such as The politics of chemistry (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Tóxicos invisibles (Icaria, 2020), Agnotologías (Tirant lo Blanch, 2024), and La materia no existe (Marcial Pons Historia, 2026). He is currently working on the epistemological role of refugee scholars and activists in the twentieth century. Nieto-Galan’s research outputs
Jaume Sastre-Juan
Serra Húnter Fellow at the Institute for the History of Science and the Department of Philosophy of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. His research interests are the political history of science popularization as well as the history and philosophy of technology more generally. He has published on the politics of “interactivity” in science museums, on the interest of the Rockefeller Foundation in science popularization in the 1930s, and on the banalization of nuclear technologies through display. He has co-edited the books Science popularization as cultural diplomacy in Cold War. UNESCO, 1946-1958 (Routledge, 2026) and La cultura científica de la Transición: Museos, ciencia y política en la Barcelona preolímpica (Bellaterra Edicions, in press). He is currently doing research on the history of concrete and the cement industry. Sastre-Juan’s research outputs
Communication & Support
Laia Torres Casas
I have a PhD in theoretical chemistry (UAB, 2003) and a Master’s in science communication (UPF, 2002). I also trained in science teaching at the UAB and I am a member of the LIEC-UAB group (Language and Science Teaching). I have been the research technician and impact officer at the Institute for the History of Science (iHC-UAB) since December 2025. Before joining the iHC, I worked for twenty years at the magazine Investigación y Ciencia (Spanish edition of Scientific American), first as an editor and then as the editor in chief. I have also worked at the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) on various scientific culture projects and in collaboration with research centers such as the ALBA Synchrotron, the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), the Institute of High Energy Physics (IFAE) and the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO).
Work team
Andrea Álvarez Laorden
I am a student of the PhD programme at the Institute for the History of Science (iHC-UAB) and a member of the CLIMASAT project “Remote-sensing satellite data and the making of global climate in Europe 1980-2000”. Although Earth observation satellites have the capacity to monitor the entire planet, the infrastructures and resources needed to do so are not accessible around the globe. Recognising this asymmetry, I propose to investigate a project from the end of the XXth century led by the Cartographic Institute of Catalonia where they used data from the French SPOT satellite to monitor territories in South America, with the aim of contributing to the understanding of how satellite data and its users contribute to the construction of global and environmental knowledge about the Earth. My interests include the history of technology in interrelation with environmental history, the history of ecological thought, experiences and resistances in the construction of science and technology as well as the relationship between science and gender. Álvarez’s research outputs
Max Bautista Perpinyà
PhD student in the philosophy of science at the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. I work on the history of ecology and the environmentalist movement in Spain between 1972 and 2007. I study three communities who work on issues related to environmental issues in Mediterranean forests: forest engineers, terrestrial ecologists, and grassroots activists, and their developments since late Francoism up until the turn of the century. I think a lot about their “contact zones” –the tensions, animosities, collaborations, mutual understandings– and the historical move towards an eventual “convergence” between them. I am interested in the relationship between science and politics, and of how different actors articulate science for environmentalist objectives, through different strategies and coming from diverging political cultures. I am interested in the entanglements between scientists’ search for useful and objective science, their life histories, processes of experimentation, data-making, and expressions of nationalism.
Miquel Carandell Baruzzi
With a degree in biology, a master’s degree in history of science and a PhD in history of science, he is currently Serra Húnter professor at the History of Medicine Unit of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. During his career he has published articles and edited special issues in indexed journals such as History of Science, Public Understanding of Science or Centaurus, and has published the academic book The Orce Man. Controversy, media and politics in Human Origins Research (Brill, 2022). He has also carried out research stays at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and at the National Museum of Natural History and Science in Lisbon. He has also published popularization pieces and four books: Barcelona, ciència i coneixement (Albertí, 2017), De les gàbies als espais oberts. Història i futur del Zoo de Barcelona (Alpina, 2018), El taxidermista de la plaça Reial (Alpina, 2021) and Debates y fraudes. Controversias en evolución humana (Salvat, 2023). He has also worked at the Granollers Natural Sciences Museum as head of the library and archive. Carandell’s research outputs
Roger Fernàndez i Tudela
With a degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology (University of Barcelona) and a master’s degree in History of Science (Autonomous University of Barcelona), my interests revolve mainly around the history of technology and the concept of time from a materialist perspective. With Jaume Valentines I carried out the final Master’s thesis on the management of urban mobility in Barcelona during the revolutionary period of the rearguard of the Civil War. Now, I try to combine the work of a bookseller with developing a research project around these topics under the direction of Jaume Sastre Juan. I actively participate in anarcho-syndicalism and other libertarian spaces from which to recompose a class politics capable of responding to current challenges.
Judit Gil-Farrero
Associate Lecturer in History of Science at the Universidad de Zaragoza. She is also editor of Sabers en acció (Knowledge(s) in Action), a periodic publication on digital humanities devoted to historical and social studies on science, technology, medicine and the environment (since 2020). PhD in History of Science (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, UAB), she has a Master’s Degree in History of Science: Science, History and Society (UAB) and a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Sciences (UAB). Her research topics focus on the analysis, from an interdisciplinary perspective, of environmental conflicts and the strategies followed to hide or make them visible, the environmental impacts of public policies related to the natural environment, the role of experts in environmental conflicts, the processes of protection of natural areas and the perception of nature and landscape. Since 2024, she is editorial secretary of the journal Historia Agraria.
Inês Gomes
Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities, and the Associate Laboratory for Research and Innovation in Heritage, Arts, Sustainability, and Territory (IN2PAST). She holds a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Lisbon (2015). The focus of her doctoral dissertation was the examination of material culture, scientific instruments, and collections. Specifically, she investigated the origins and evolution of natural history collections in Portuguese secondary schools. In 2016, she joined the Institute of Contemporary History (IHC) on a research project addressing the impact of invasive species in southern Europe, thereby extending her research interests into the field of environmental history. From 2017 to 2019, she held the position of postdoctoral researcher at the Interuniversity Center for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT). Since June 2019, she has been engaged in a collaborative research project, the ReSEED Project (Rescuing Seed’s Heritage: Engaging in a New Framework of Agriculture and Innovation since the 18th Century), funded by the ERC. Her current research interests align with a recent historiographical trend that emphasises the need for interdisciplinary studies between cultural heritage, history, and natural sciences to support effective conservation policies.
Santiago Gorostiza
Santiago Gorostiza is an environmental historian working at the intersection of political ecology and the history of science. Since 2019, he has served as the Spanish representative to the European Society of Environmental History. The Spanish Civil War and postwar have been the key focus of his research, with special attention to anarchist collectivisations of water and land, on the one hand, and the autarkic projects of the Franco dictatorship, on the other. He continues investigating the fortification of the Pyrenean border and guerrilla warfare in postwar Spain. The production of knowledge about climate and the environment is a more recent research interest. Santiago completed his PhD at the Centro de Estudos Sociais of the Universidade de Coimbra (Portugal) as a Marie Curie ITN fellow. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) and at the Centre for History at Sciences Po (Paris), where he was part of the Shifting Shores project and remains an affiliated researcher. At the Institute for the History of Science (iHC-UAB), Santiago works on the ERC-funded project “CLIMASAT: Remote-sensing Satellite Data and the Making of Global Climate in Europe, 1980s-2000s”.
Carolina Granado Torres
I am a student in the doctoral programme at the Institute for the Hhistory of Science (iHC, UAB). I study how climate became a scientific, politic and diplomatic issue in the late 1970s. After comparing the different scientific assessment models coexisting in that decade, I put in context the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the main advisory institution for the next decades. I also try to explain why this model became the dominant one and the reasons behind this. Another fundamental question of my thesis is how climate experts frame scientific knowledge of climate change to be understood by politicians, and how this frame dictates the type of questions and solutions that may be discussed later in international negotiations. My research also explores the complexity of the figure of the expert, working at the same time as a scientist, but also holding positions of power and playing a role in activism and diplomacy. Before starting my PhD, I did a master’s degree in History and Philosophy of Science at the Université de Paris (Paris VII, Diderot) and a bachelor’s degree in Physics and Mathematics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).
Laia Iturrizaga Zurita
I am a PhD student in the History of Science programme at the Institute for the History of Science (iHC-UAB) within this project. I explore the networks of clandestine abortion organised by the Catalan feminist movement during the 1970s and 1980s in Barcelona, as well as the production and circulation of knowledge on sexual and reproductive health that accompanied these practices. Before starting my PhD, I completed the Master’s degree in History of Science (UAB-UB-UPF), where I wrote a thesis about clandestine abortion networks in Barcelona (1976-1985) which was awarded the Master’s Thesis Prizes of both the Catalan Society for the History of Science and Technology (SCHCT) and the Spanish Society for the History of Medicine. Previously, I studied for a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and a Master’s in Secondary Education Teaching, which allowed me to work as a secondary school science teacher. My research interests include the history of abortion, sexuality and reproduction, epistemologies of ignorance and resistance, and the processes of knowledge production and circulation within social movements. Alongside my academic work, I am actively involved in feminist and anticapitalist organisations. Iturrizaga’s research outputs
Ana Macaya Andrés
She has a degree in Chemistry and an Master’s degree in History, Science and Society from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her interests revolve around the construction of scientific knowledge during the Transition from gender perspectives and those coming from social movements. She currently combines university teaching with secondary education, generating new ways of approaching the gender perspective in science in high schools. She also participates in groups for the fight for sexual and gender freedom from collective management.
Researcher of the Interuniversitary Centre for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT) and an assistant professor of the Department of Applied Social Sciences of the NOVA School of Sciences and Technology (NOVA University of Lisbon) (NOVA FCT). Her double PhD in History, Philosophy and Heritage of Science and Technology and in Cultural History (NOVA FCT and U. Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2013) was awarded a special mention of the 2017 DHST Prize for Young Scholars (International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology). Her work was recognised by other distinctions, such as being selected as one of the 2022 Early Career Scholar Plenary Lecturer by the European Society for the History of Science. She coordinated the exploratory research project Hi-BicLab – History Lab for Sustainable Urban Mobilities: Lisbon’s cycling policies (2022-2024) (financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia; EXPL/FER-HFC/0847/2021). She works at the intersection of history of technology, mobility, urban and colonial history. She has also done editorial work as chief editor of HoST – Journal of History of Science and Technology, 2017-20; and co-editor of the Vol. 4 of Ciência, Tecnologia e Medicina na Construção de Portugal. Inovação e contestação, século XX (CIUHCT, 2021).
