Artefacts is an association of historians of science, technology, engineering and medicine working in museums and academic institutions who use material culture in historical study and public displays.
Artefacts encourages new research and collaboration through annual meetings and publications.
Call for papers
This time, Artefacts is experimenting with two tracks for submissions:
- Works to be considered for publication (a pre-circulated paper and a longer presentation based on the paper)
- Works-in-progress (shorter presentations without a paper)
Abstracts for track 1 should be 500–1,000 words; abstracts for track 2 should be 200–300 words. We aim to notify accepted participants by 5 June 2025.
Track 1—additional information for accepted papers:
- Format: We ask for you to use our Word template
- Length: We are flexible but encourage you to aim for around 6,000–8,000 words. If you need to diverge significantly from that, please contact artefacts@tekniskmuseum.no
- Circulation: We will collect papers by 28 September 2025 and circulate them with all the other participants shortly thereafter. If the meeting participants want to provide the author with feedback, they have the option of sending it directly to the author or requesting the organizers anonymize their feedback after sending it to the general meeting email (artefacts@tekniskmuseum.no)
- Presentation: Your presentation must be based on your paper, but we do not encourage reading the text verbatim
- Process: It depends on the number of papers submitted and their quality. The editor(s) will meet with track 1 colleagues during the Artefacts meeting. We will decide together if we have enough to generate a proposal to the Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press (SISP). If the resulting proposal is successful, we will follow the standard SISP submission and review process. See FAQs.
- The Experiment—The Artefacts series is a great resource to disseminate our work. We want to see if we can make the process—from meeting to publication—faster and easier for both contributors and editors, so are experimenting with a proceedings model. The caveat is that experiments don’t always work, but we are optimistic!
Artefacts 2025
This year's Artefacts conference will take place at the Norsk Teknisk Museum (Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology), Oslo, Norway, 12-14 October 2025.
The theme of the conference is “Care and Repair”, and we encourage proposals concerning how erosion, breakdown, and maintenance, instead of progress and innovation, can be starting points for research. What are the limits of our fragile world, and what work does caring do? We characterize ‘care and repair’ broadly, encompassing objects, people, and environments, but all proposals should have a focus on the material culture of science, technology, and/or medicine.
Past meetings
History
Artefacts was founded by Deutsches Museum, Science Museum and Smithsonian in 1996. Since then, Artefacts has brought together academics and museum professionals from around the world to share research which focuses on material culture and object studies.
Publications
Publications are a core output of Artefacts meetings. Copies are distributed to libraries world-wide and can be accessed from the following links:
- Volumes 11, 12 and 13 (Challenging Collections, Behind the Exhibit, and Understanding Use) are published by Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press and can be downloaded free from the Smithsonian website.
- Volume 8: Material Culture and Electronic Sound is available through Rowman and Littlefield.
- Volumes 7, 9 and 10 (Illuminating Instruments, Analyzing Art and Aesthetics, and Objects in Motion: Globalizing Technology) are available from Random House.
- Volumes 1 to 6 (Manifesting Medicine, Exposing Electronics, Tackling Transport, Presenting Pictures, Materializing the Military, and Showcasing Space).