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Section: Science Technology and Innovation Studies
Lawrence Dritsas
- Name
- Dr Lawrence Dritsas
- Title
- Fellow; Programme Director for Science, Technology and International Development
- Organisation
- Science Technology and Innovation, School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh - Address
- 5.10 Chrystal Macmillan Building 15a George Square Edinburgh UK EH8 9LD
- Telephone
- +44 (0)131 650 4011
- L.Dritsas@ed.ac.uk
- URL
- http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/staff/stis/dritsas_l
Outline Biography
Lawrence Dritsas began his studies in the United States (BA, Penn State; MS, Virginia Tech) and has interdisciplinary training in the natural and social sciences. He taught secondary school with the US Peace Corps in Malawi in the late 1990s. In 2005 he completed his PhD at the Centre of African Studies in Edinburgh with a study of the scientific exploration of Africa in the mid-nineteenth century. At Edinburgh's Science Studies Unit (within the Science, Technology and Innovation Subject Group) he has held an ESRC postdoctoral fellowship and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. He is web officer for the subject group. He is programme director for the MSc in Science, Technology and International Development.
Research Interests
Generally, the history and sociology of science in Africa. Within this large frame, Lawrence is interested in the history of tropical veterinary medicine; African fisheries; historical geographies of scientific knowledge in relation to colonial empires; the links between science, technology and development practices; the history of scientific expeditions (particularly the exploration of Africa); climate change and, tangentially, the 'science studies of science fiction'. A wider intellectual project cutting across these themes is his interest in uncovering the continuities and discontinuities between colonial and postcolonial scientific research in Africa.
Selected Publications
2010 Zambesi: David Livingstone and Expeditionary Science in Africa (forthcoming monograph with IB Tauris)
2011'Conflicts of Method in Mid-Nineteenth Century Geographical Discovery', in Charles WJ Withers and David Livingstone, eds. Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science. University of Chicago Press.
2006 'Civilising Missions, Natural History and British Industry: Livingstone in the Zambezi', Endeavour, 36, no. 2: 50-54
2005 'From Lake Nyassa to Philadelphia: a Geography of the Zambesi Expedition', 1858-64, The British Journal for the History of Science 38, no. 1: 35-52
2004 'Treasures of Kew: David Livingstone, John Kirk, and Buaze Fibre', Kew, n.46 (September), p. 41
Teaching and Supervision
Lawrence is currently programme director of the MSc in Science Technology and International Development. He is also happy to supervise MSc and PhD students interested in the history of science in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly topics related to exploration, science and imperialism, science and colonialism, science in Africa and science, technology and development. Prospective students are encouraged to contact him directly.
Msc in Science Technology and International Development
MSc Option
Science, Technology and Development: Roots and LegaciesUndergraduate Option
Science and Society 1B: Nature and EnvironmentThis page was published on 26 February 2010