Prof Dr Karin Bijsterveld (K.T.)

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

Karin Bijsterveld (1961) graduated in history in the late 1980s, and is now professor of Science, Technology & Modern Culture at Maastricht University. She is author of Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture and Public Problems of Noise in the Twentieth Century (MIT 2008), co-editor (with José van Dijck) of Sound Souvenirs: Audio Technologies, Memory and Cultural Practices (AUP 2009), and co-editor (with Trevor Pinch) of The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies (2012). She has edited Soundscapes of the Urban Past: Staged Sound as Mediated Cultural Heritage (Transcript, 2013) and a special issue on Auditory History for The Public Historian (2015), and is co-author of Sound and Safe: A History of Listening behind the Wheel (Oxford UP, 2014, with Eefje Cleophas, Stefan Krebs and Gijs Mom). In 2019, she published a synthesizing and open access publication on the basis of her VICI project about the history of listening in the sciences: Sonic Skills: Listening for Knowledge in Science, Medicine and Engineering (1920s-Present), zie https://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9781137598318

Bijsterveld is currently head of the research program Maastricht University Science, Technology and Society Studies (MUSTS). Formerly, she directed the Research MSc 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) and member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Sound Studies: Interdisciplinary Journal of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Bijsterveld is member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities. She was fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) in 2017. She was (Fall 2016) and will be (Fall 2019) visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.  

Awards & honours:

- Selection of The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies (Oxford UP 2012, Eds. T. Pinch & K. Bijsterveld) for CHOICE (Current Reviews for Academic Libraries) List of Outstanding Academic Titles 2012.

- Citation of honour as finalist (“runner-up”) in the competition 2010 for the Sidney M. Edelstein Award by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) for Bijsterveld, K. Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture and Public Problems of Noise in the Twentieth Century (MIT Press, 2008).

- Usher Award 2002 by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) for: Bijker, W.E. &  Bijsterveld, K. (2000). Women Walking through Plans: Technology, Democracy, and Gender Identity. Technology & Culture, 41, 3, 485-515.

- Schreuder Award 1998 by the Dutch Society of Gerontology (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Gerontologie) for: Bijster­veld, K. (1996). Geen kwestie van leeftijd: Verzorgings­staat, wetenschap en discussies rond ouderen in Nederland, 1945-1982. Amsterdam: Van Gen­nep.

- SNS-Bank Limburg Award 1996 for: Bijsterveld, K. (1996). Geen kwestie van leeftijd: Verzorgingsstaat, wetenschap en discussies rond ouderen in Neder­land, 1945-1982. Am­sterdam: Van Gennep.