Dr G.J. Somsen

Geert Somsen is a historian of science in the History Department and the Science and Technology Studies research program (MUSTS). He is Director of Studies of the MA ESST and editor-in-chief of the Journal for the History of Knowledge. Since 2019 Somsen participates in the HERA-funded research project "The Scientific Conference: a Social, Cultural, and Political History", alongside partners in Paris, London, and Uppsala.

Somsen's research focuses on science and international relations. He has published extensively on scientific internationalism, the belief that science can be a model for peaceful cooperation. His current research on the history of the scientific conference examines how internationalism was (or was not) enacted in such meetings.

Somsen's teaching moves between history of science, political history, and science and technology studies. He has taught widely in undergraduate and graduate programs at FASoS and elsewhere, and has been program director at BA, MA, and PhD levels as well.

A complete CV is available below under Files.

Geert Somsen was taught at the University of California, San Diego, and Utrecht University (PhD History of Science). He obtained an MSc in chemistry (VU Amsterdam) before he turned to history of science.

Somsen has held several fellowships and visiting appointments. Between 2014 and 2016 he was a Marie Curie fellow at the Center for International History of Columbia University. He spent the Fall semester of 2016 at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin, and the 2012 Spring semester at the Institute for the History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University as visiting researcher. He had shorter appointments at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome and at Harvard University. After his PhD he was Othmer postdoctoral fellow at the Science History Institute (then called Chemical Heritage Foundation) in Philadelphia.

Since September 2020, Somsen has a split appointment between Maastricht University and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.