Prof Dr Karin Bijsterveld (K.T.)

Contemporary history; history and sociology of science and technology; sound studies (cultural history of sound)

Karin Bijsterveld is historian and a professor of Science, Technology and Modern Culture at Maastricht University. Her work focuses on the cultural history of sound, science and  technology. She has widely published on these topics, including in Isis, Osiris, Technology and Culture, Social Studies of Science, The Senses and Society, and Sound Studies.

She is author of Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture, and Public Problems of Noise in the Twentieth Century (MIT 2008), co-editor of Sound Souvenirs: Audio Technologies, Memory and Cultural Practices (Amsterdam UP 2009, OA, with José van Dijck), co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies (Oxford UP 2012, with Trevor Pinch), co-author of Sound and Safe: A History of Listening behind the Wheel (Oxford UP 2014, with Eefje Cleophas, Stefan Krebs and Gijs Mom), and editor of The Public Historian’s special issue on Auditory History (2015). Among her other books are Sonic Skills: Listening for Knowledge in Science, Medicine and Engineering (Palgrave 2019, OA monograph) and Interdisciplinarity in the Scholarly Life Cycle (edited volume with Aagje Swinnen, Palgrave 2023, OA). With Anna Kvicalova, she is co-editor of a special issue on Forensic Voices for Sound Studies (2023).

Bijsterveld has led several NWO-funded projects, including the VICI project Sonic Skills. She is member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities. She was visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (2016, 2019), fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS, 2017), and member of the Dutch Council for the Humanities (2017-2023).

At the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences (FASoS) of Maastricht University, Bijsterveld is member of the Graduate School Advisory Board. Formerly, she directed the research program Maastricht University Science, Technology and Society Studies (MUSTS), the Research Master Cultures of Arts, Science and Technology (CAST), and the Netherlands Graduate Research School Science, Technology and Modern Culture (WTMC). She is founding member of ESSA (European Sound Studies Association). For a full CV including awards, honours and links to publications, see "files".