Ass.-Prof. Sebastian Felten, PhD

Tenure Track Professor of Early Modern History of Science


Sebastian Felten

Ass.-Prof. Sebastian Felten, PhD

Kolingasse 14-16
1090 Wien
Room: 02.37

T: +43-1-4277-40809
sebastian.felten@univie.ac.at

 u:find - Information about

Upcoming events of the Forschungsschwerpunkt Wissenschaftsgeschichte and the AG Wissenschaftsgeschichte, a monthly colloquium on the history of science, that I co-convene with Anna Echterhölter and Nils Güttler.

Sebastian Felten (PhD, King’s College London) is a historian of science, finance, and bureaucracy in early modern Europe. He is Tenure Track Professor of Early Modern History of Science at the Department of History at the University of Vienna and was a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin (MPIWG) between 2015 and 2018. He is PI of the ERC STG Project "Sustained Concerns: Administration of Mineral Resource Extraction in Central Europe, 1550-1850" (SCARCE, 2023-2028).

A collective volume on Histories of Bureaucratic Knowledge, which is the result of a working group at the MPIWG (co-convened with Christine von Oertzen), was published in December 2020.

Recent single-authored publications include papers on Enlightenment ergonomicsdistributed cognition in early modern mines; the revival of early modern mining culture during the Nazis' war effort, and bureaucratic rationality. Open-access versions of my published work can be found on https://uscholar.univie.ac.at/.

ORCiDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-8194-4112

His current research explores knowledge about nature through a focus on mineral resources as they featured in metallurgy, mineralogy, economics, and ergonomics. He has studied commerce and bureaucracy using the tools of historical epistemology to build bridges between the history of science and social, cultural and economic history. His objective for the next years is to apply this integrated approach to understand the peculiar rationality of early modern resource extraction in Central Europe, which was often highly contradictory. In caring for workers, officials and experts rationalised harm; in seeing to the financial viability of mines, they curtailed profits; in setting up self-sustaining mining operations, they externalised risks to local communities who competed for water and access to forests; in producing authoritative knowledge about mining they made its adverse effects less visible. While this state-centred system was dismantled during liberal reforms in the 1850s, its culture of extraction survived. Engineers and administrative experts adopted this culture during their training at Central European mining academies before going on to work for private companies during the age of globalising industrial capitalism from 1850 onwards.

ERC Starting Grant "Sustained Concerns: Administration of Mineral Resource Extraction in Central Europe, 1550-1850" (SCARCE, 2023-2028)

The extraction of mineral resources has sharply increased over the past hundred years, and the ongoing transition to “green energy” is driving demand for minerals such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt. SCARCE provides a critical history of today's stakeholder conflicts by showing how contradictory principles of resource management – economic development, sustainability, and technological innovation – were forged in proto-industrial settings. It explores alternative, historical ways of provisioning for communities, making them available for current debates on environmental degradation and climate emergency.

Project Homepage: https://scarce.univie.ac.at/ 

Preliminary studies for this project have appeared in the Journal for the History of Knowledge,  WerkstattGeschichte,  History of Science, and Renaissance Studies.

First book: Money in the Dutch Republic: Everyday Practice and Circuits of Exchange (March 2022)

This book focuses on chemical and mathematical practices to tell a new history of money in the early modern world, written from the viewpoint of the Dutch Republic. It depicts farming communities in interaction with urban elites and describes how peasants and craftsmen, stewards and churchmen, metallurgists and officials fashioned objects into money and kept them in circulation. The book’s narrative picks up at the apogee of the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century, when the country was a major centre in the European world-system and when hundreds of different monies were used alongside each other. It concludes at a point when most of this plurality had been replaced by more uniform national currency in the nineteenth century. The book argues that mundane acts of scrutiny generated and sustained money’s ability to be exchanged for something else across time, space, and social divides. Mints, banks, professionals but also ‘ordinary users’ such as peasants or labourers forged links between matter and value by creating evidence about objects and by circulating or accepting this information. They could also undo these links by voicing doubts and refusing other people’s evidence. Objects then lost their ability to act as money. The book shows how over time links between matter and value were made more durable through increasing attention to the material properties of money objects and how, paradoxically, this made it more plausible to think of money in immaterial terms. The rationalisation of early modern monies into national currency was pursued by state officials, patriotic economists, and financial experts at political centres, and it ultimately diminished the role that users played in the maintenance of the system.

Introduction can be accessed here: https://uscholar.univie.ac.at/detail/o:1676773

Chapter 1 can be accessed here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/money-in-the-dutch-republic/1597F40C3D62B07D897266C3E22C9E26

A part of the book's argument can be found in this chapter on coins as objects of inquiry.

Recent collective volume: Queer Vienna: Knowledge and Counter-Knowledge in an Emancipatory Archive

Important achievements of the LGBTQ movements against bad or ill-used science have been rolled back or questioned across Europe. To counter these tendencies, this research and writing workshop will ask: What tools, sites, forms of communication, and technologies constitute the counter-knowledge that lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer people have developed to understand themselves and communicate to others?

Students at the University of Vienna will conducted archival research at QWIEN Centre for Queer History Vienna and published their findings in the international open-access journal Æther. 

The project was supported by the Zukunftsfonds of the Republic of Austria, the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies of the University of Vienna and the Forschungsschwerpunkt Wissenschaftsgeschichte.

Curriculum Vitae

  • Curriculum Vitae
    • since 2023: Tenure Track Professor of Early Modern History of Science
    • 2019-2023: University of Vienna, Department of History, Universitätsassistent (Postdoc) in History of Science
    • 2022: Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Europe Center
    • 2017-2018: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin, Dept. 2 (Daston), Research Fellow
    • 2015-2017: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin, Dept. 2 (Daston), Postdoctoral Research Fellow
    • 2011-2015: King's College London, Ph.D. (Thesis: "Unlikely Circuits: General Monetisation in a European Rural Society, c. 1700-1900 [Netherlands]")
    • 2011-2014: German Historical Institute London, Editorial Assistant of the Digital Humanities Project ”Pauper Letters and Petitions for Poor Relief in Germany and Great Britain, 1770–1914“
    • 2010-2011: King's College London, M.A. in Early Modern History
    • 2009: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Language course
    • 2007: Universiteit van Amsterdam, Study exchange
    • 2005–2009: Humboldt-Universität Berlin, B.A. in History and German Literature and Linguistics
  • Awards
    • 2011:   King’s College London, Jinty Nelson Prize
    • 2011:   King’s College London, Early Modern History Prize

Research

  • Research interests
    • history of earth sciences
    • history of technical sciences
    • historical epistemology
    • history of knowledge
    • sustainability
    • resources
    • bureaucracy
    • financial history
    • museums
  • Projects
    • 2021-2023: Co-convener of Working Group “Resources in the Early Modern World” (with Renée Raphael)
    • 2016-2022: Co-convener of the Working Group  “History of Bureaucratic Knowledge” at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin (with PD Dr. Christine von Oertzen)

    • 2021-2023: Co-organizer of project “Queer Vienna: Knowledge and Counter-Knowledge in an Emancipatory Archive” with students of the University of Vienna and in collaboration with QWIEN Center for Queer History Vienna
    • 2016-2021: Member of the Research Group “Affective Economies and Global Knowledge Society”, organized by Prof. Inger Leemans (VU Amsterdam)
    • 2017-2022: Member of the authors’ group “Embodying Value: Representing Money in the Early Modern Period”, organized by Prof. Joanna Woodall (Courtauld Institute) and Prof. Natasha Seaman (Rhode Island College)
    • 2016-2019: Member of the authors’ group “The Material Culture of the Mines in Early Modern Europe”, organized by Dr. Tina Asmussen (ETHZ)
  • Conference organisation

    2018

    • Co-organizer of the conference “Forgetting Knowledge” at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin, in cooperation with the Descartes Center (Utrecht), Vossius Center (Amsterdam) und Huygens ING (Amsterdam), 28 February – 2 March 2018 (co-organizer)
    • Authors' meeting of the Working Group History of Bureaucratic Knowledge at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin, 24-26 May 2018  (co-organizer with PD Christine von Oertzen)

    2017

    2016

    • Panel “Knowledge Practices in Bureaucracies, 1600 to the Present” auf dem History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Atlanta, 3-6. November 2016.

Professional Service

  • Fellowships and Memberships
    • History of Science Society
    • Renaissance Society of America
    • Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, der Medizin und der Technik
    • Key Research Area History of Science at the University of Vienna
  • Reviewer

    Peer-review for:

    • History of Science
    • Nuncius
    • Isis

    Book reviews for:

    • Renaissance Quarterly
    • Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte

    Remote referee for the European Research Council

Publications

Showing entries 1 - 20 out of 25
Early Modern Resources: An Introduction. / Felten, Sebastian; Raphael, Renée.
In: Isis, Vol. 114, No. 3, 09.2023, p. 599-603.

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed


Managing Mineral Growth in Early Modern Mining. / Felten, Sebastian.
In: Isis, Vol. 114, No. 3, 09.2023, p. 626-630.

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed


Money supplies. / Felten, Sebastian.
In: Isis. An International Review Devoted to the History of Science and its Cultural Influences, Vol. 114, No. 2, 06.2023, p. 387-392.

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed


Archiv in Bewegung – eine Einleitung. / Felten, Sebastian; Brunner, Andreas; Sulzenbacher, Hannes.
Queer Vienna: Einblicke in ein Bewegungsarchiv. ed. / Sebastian Felten; Andreas Brunner; Hannes Sulzenbacher. Zürich: intercom, 2023. p. A1-A11 (Æther, Vol. 8).

Publications: Contribution to bookChapter


Queer Vienna: Einblicke in ein Bewegungsarchiv. / Felten, Sebastian (Editor); Brunner, Andreas (Editor); Sulzenbacher, Hannes.
Zürich: intercom, 2023. (Æther, Vol. 8).

Publications: BookCollection


Money in the Dutch Republic: Everyday Practice and Circuits of Exchange. / Felten, Sebastian.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 286 p.

Publications: BookPeer Reviewed


Queere Archive als Lernorte. / Felten, Sebastian.
In: Das Heft : PH-Magazin, Vol. 6, No. 1, 02.2022, p. 9-9.

Publications: Other contribution to periodicalNewspaper/Magazine article


Unboxed: Transgender in a Gay Museum? A Field Report by the Curators. / Felten, Sebastian; Kahn, Rebecca Josina.
In: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2, 01.05.2021, p. 257-264.

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed


Rubbed, pricked, and boiled: Coins as objects of inquiry in the Dutch Republic. / Felten, Sebastian.
Early Modern Knowledge Societies as Affective Economies. ed. / Anne Goldgar; Inger Leemans. London: Routledge, 2020. p. 276-302 (Knowledge Societies in History, Vol. 3).

Publications: Contribution to bookChapterPeer Reviewed


Bureaucracy as Knowledge. / Felten, Sebastian; von Oertzen, Christine.
In: Journal for the History of Knowledge (JHoK), Vol. 1, No. 1, 17.12.2020, p. 1-16.

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed


Histories of Bureaucratic Knowledge. / Felten, Sebastian (Editor); von Oertzen, Christine (Editor).
London: Ubiquity Press, 2020. 149 p.

Publications: BookCollectionPeer Reviewed


Sustainable Gains: Dutch Investment and Bureaucratic Rationality in Eighteenth-Century Saxon Mines. / Felten, Sebastian.
In: Journal for the History of Knowledge (JHoK), Vol. 1 (1), No. 14, 17.12.2020, p. 1-15.

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed


Mining culture, labour, and the state in early modern Saxony. / Felten, Sebastian.
In: Renaissance Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1, 01.02.2020, p. 119-148.

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed


Through the bog. / Felten, Sebastian.
Surprise: 107 Variations on the Unexpected [ = Festschrift Lorraine Daston]. ed. / Mechthild Fend; Anke Te Heesen; Christine von Oertzen; Fernando Vidal. Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2019. p. 102-104.

Publications: Contribution to bookChapter


The career of a catalogue: Organizational memory, materiality and the dual nature of the past at the British Museum (1970–today). / Blagoev, Blagoy; Felten, Sebastian; Kahn, Rebecca.
In: Organization Studies , Vol. 39, No. 12, 01.12.2018, p. 1757-1783.

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed


The history of science and the history of bureaucratic knowledge: Saxon mining, circa 1770. / Felten, Sebastian.
In: History of Science, Vol. 56, No. 4, 01.12.2018, p. 403-431.

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed


Showing entries 1 - 20 out of 25

Activities

Showing entries 1 - 20 out of 38

The Value of Bureaucracy: Files as a Source for the History of Resource Knowledge

Sebastian Felten
Talk or oral contribution
26.9.2024 - 26.9.2024

Uses of the Past in Central European Mining

Sebastian Felten , Sarah Seinitzer
Bergbaukolloquium Montanuniversität Leoben
Conference, Talk or oral contribution
22.5.2024 - 22.5.2024

Haushaltsbücher: Individuelle Aufschreibepraktiken zwischen Normierung und Idiosynkrasie

Sebastian Felten , Li Gerhalter , Verena Halsmayer
Zum Radius unserer Empirien
Seminar/Workshop, Talk or oral contribution
17.5.2024 - 17.5.2024

Haushaltsbücher als historische Quellen

Sebastian Felten , Li Gerhalter , Verena Halsmayer
Haushaltsbücher in der Sammlung Frauennachlässe (Wien)
Seminar/Workshop, Talk or oral contribution
29.2.2024 - 29.2.2024

Haushaltsbücher in der Sammlung Frauennachlässe (Wien)

Sebastian Felten , Li Gerhalter , Verena Halsmayer
Haushaltsbücher in der Sammlung Frauennachlässe (Wien)
Seminar/Workshop, Organisation of ...
29.2.2024 - 1.3.2024

Nachhaltige Ausbeute: Ressourcenwissen in der frühneuzeitlichen Montanverwaltung

Sebastian Felten
Technikgeschichte über Mittag
Lecture series, colloquium, Talk or oral contribution
12.1.2024 - 12.1.2024

ERC Mentoring Initiative: The Applicant's Perspective

Sebastian Felten
Talk or oral contribution
1.12.2023 - 1.12.2023

ERC Mentoring Initiative: The Applicant's Perspective

Sebastian Felten
Talk or oral contribution
9.7.2023 - 9.7.2023

Queer Vienna: Einblicke in ein Bewegungsarchiv

Sebastian Felten , Hannes Sulzenbacher , Andreas Brunner
Queer Vienna: Einblicke in ein Bewegungsarchiv
Panel discussion, round table, Organisation of ...
25.5.2023 - 25.5.2023

Akten-Berge: Bodenschätze als bürokratisches Wissensobjekt, 1550-1850

Sebastian Felten
Talk or oral contribution
24.5.2023 - 24.5.2023

Blatt, Liste, Plot: Beamte als Historiker im vorindustriellen Bergbau

Sebastian Felten
Akten: Kleine Form und Konvolut
Conference, Talk or oral contribution
9.2.2023 - 9.2.2023

Queer Vienna: Einblicke in ein Bewegungsarchiv

Sebastian Felten , Andreas Brunner , Zohra Briki
Queer Vienna: Einblicke in ein Bewegungsarchiv
Seminar/Workshop, Organisation of ...
9.8.2022 - 9.8.2022

Silver flows

Sebastian Felten
Natural Resources, Supply Chains, and the Politics of Epistemic Technologies
Conference, Talk or oral contribution
29.6.2022 - 29.6.2022

Reconsidering Material and Knowledge Production

Sebastian Felten
Let’s Get to Work: Bringing Labor History and the History of Science Together
Conference, Talk or oral contribution
3.6.2022 - 3.6.2022

History as Resource: Mining Metals and Collecting Data in Central Europe

Sebastian Felten
Talk or oral contribution
2.5.2022 - 2.5.2022

Measuring Quantity

Sebastian Felten , Angela Creager
Cambridge History of Technology
Seminar/Workshop, Talk or oral contribution
27.4.2022 - 27.4.2022

Geo-Resources in the Early Modern World

Sebastian Felten , Renée Raphael
Geo-Resources in the Early Modern World
Seminar/Workshop, Organisation of ...
22.4.2022 - 22.4.2022

History as Resource: Mining Metals and Collecting Data in Central Europe

Sebastian Felten
Talk or oral contribution
14.4.2022 - 14.4.2022

Stanford University

Sebastian Felten
Research
.3.2022 - .6.2022

Measuring Quantity

Sebastian Felten , Angela Creager
Cambridge History of Technology
Seminar/Workshop, Talk or oral contribution
1.11.2021 - 1.11.2021

Showing entries 1 - 20 out of 38