Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Lehrstuhl für Wissenschaftsgeschichte

Austen Van Burns, M.A.

Name
Austen Van Burns M.A.
Status
Gastwissenschaftlerin
E-Mail
austenvb (at) princeton.edu

→ Vita

→ Research interests

→ Research project

→ Selection of workshops, conferences and presentations

→ Teaching

 

Vita

Austen Van Burns is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of History at Princeton University, where she received her M.A. with Distinction in 2022. Her dissertation project, "Word, Picture, World: The Vienna Circle, the Isotype Institute, and International Scientific Education" is advised by Professor Michael D. Gordin.

Before Princeton, she earned a B.A. with Honors in Classical Studies from Swarthmore College. She is a visiting scholar at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin for the academic year 2023-2024.

 

Research interests

  • Historical approaches to the philosophy and sociology of science
  • Internationalism and constructed languages 
  • Modernism and visual cultures
  • Communication, popularization, and colloquial science

 

Research project

Word, Picture, World: The Vienna Circle, the Isotype Institute, and International Scientific Education

Her dissertation documents the history of the International System of Typographic Picture Education (Isotype), a method for conveying scientific information to everyday people. Developed in post-WWI Vienna, Isotype crossed logical empiricism with Esperanto-like aspirations towards universal communication. The rise of fascism forced Isotype’s creators – including the voluble Vienna Circle cofounder Otto Neurath – to relocate. They arrived in the Hague in 1943, remaining there until the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands forced them to flee again, this time to the UK, where they were interned on the Isle of Man for almost a year. Against this backdrop of increasingly violent global entanglements, Isotype grew from a localized project to a European, and later transatlantic, educational institution. From its official founding in 1934 to the Isotype Institute’s closure in 1971, the "international picture language" appeared in Soviet statistics manuals, American newspaper cartoons, British children’s books, and pamphlets distributed in decolonizing West Africa. The dissertation uses the history of Isotype and its creators to pose questions about scientific communication, inter- and postwar internationalism, and the rise of modern visual culture.

 

Selection of workshops, conferences and presentations

  • Co-organizer, Committee for the Study of Books and Media (lecture series). Faculty Chairs: Anthony Grafton and Nigel Smith. Princeton, New Jersey. Spring 2021 – Spring 2023.
  • Pre-circulated paper, “Of Graphs and Biographs: Interpreting Texts, Images, and Lives.” Harvard-Princeton-MIT History of the Physical Sciences Graduate Student Workshop. Princeton, New Jersey. 29 April 2023.
  • Commentor, “How Ideas, Individuals, Science, and Society Interact: Insights from the Story of Hermann Weyl,” by Kati Kish Bar-On. Harvard-Princeton-MIT History of the Physical Sciences Graduate Student Workshop. Princeton, New Jersey. 29 April 2023.
  • Commentor, “Can a Simple Test in Bacteria Identify Cancer-Causing Chemicals in Humans?,” by Angela N. H. Creager. History of Science program seminar. Princeton, New Jersey. 24 April 2023.
  • Panel chair, “Things.” Text and Image in the Early Modern World: An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Workshop. Organized by Pamela O. Long, Anna Speyart, and John White. Princeton, New Jersey. 24 February 2023.
  • Presenter, “The State of Nature and Nurture: Wild Children from Natural Philosophy to the Human Sciences.” A Frost Fair for Early Modernists: The Sixteenth Annual Harvard- Princeton Graduate Conference in Early Modern History. Organized by Anthony Grafton and Ann Blair. Princeton, New Jersey. 11 February 2023.
  • Panelist, “Renewal.” Abundance and Loss: Narratives of Diversity across the Natural and Human Sciences. Organized by Erika Lorraine Milam and Banu Subramaniam. Princeton, New Jersey. 04 February 2023.
  • Commentor, “Beasts in the Grid: German Archaeology and the Architectural Reconstruction of Ancient Life in the Early Twentieth Century,” by Iason Stathatos. History of Science program seminar. Princeton, New Jersey. 14 November 2022.
  • Panel organizer and chair, “What is the History of Science?”. Hosted at New College West for undergraduate students. Princeton, New Jersey. 02 November 2022

 

Teaching

  • Graduate student tutor: writing and English as an additional language, Princeton Department of History. Spring 2022-present
  • Preceptor, HIS 379: American Legal History (Laura F. Edwards), Princeton Department of History. Fall 2022.

 

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