Alex Csiszar
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alexcsiszar.bsky.social
Alex Csiszar
@alexcsiszar.bsky.social
240 followers 170 following 13 posts
History of Science, Information, Media, Books, France, Britain
Writing: https://scholar.harvard.edu/csiszar/publications
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alexcsiszar.bsky.social
Alex Csiszar @alexcsiszar.bsky.social · Nov 24
Here's a new set of short pieces on "AI and Scholarly Journals" put together by @mbaldwin.bsky.social and Brigid Vance:
online.ucpress.edu/hsns/issue/5...
My piece, "Blurry Authorship," situates LLMs within the long history of attempts at condensing scholarly knowledge.
doi.org/10.1525/hsns...
Volume 54 Issue 5 | Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences | University of California Press
online.ucpress.edu
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
graemegooday.bsky.social
Great to see a Leeds colleague receiving this prestigious Royal Society Award.
Royal Society announcement of 2026 Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar medal for HPS Awarded of the W-B-M prize: Greg Radick
August 27, 2026 at 8:16 AM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
xiaochang.bsky.social
Resurfacing online to mention: my book on the history of Speech Rec, NLP, and data-driven AI is coming out in a couple of weeks! Just got my author's copy from @uchicagopress.bsky.social and it finally feels real!
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
Divination Engines
A revealing and surprising origin story, showing how attempts to render human speech and language computable led from the era of big data to today’s AI. Since the advent of computers, society has fant...
press.uchicago.edu
June 25, 2026 at 10:03 PM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
penders.bsky.social
Skimming through *that* policy document. We're rapidly approaching the metascience "I have become death, destroyer of science" moment.
July 22, 2026 at 7:01 AM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
glvbhr.bsky.social
Merci à History of Science Society d'avoir accepté cette participation virtuelle au 2026 HSS/ESHS Joint meeting, en raison de ces circonstances.

Merci également aux collègues de la session @alexcsiszar.bsky.social @aileenfyfe.bsky.social Marianne Noel et Valérie Tesnière pour leur aide.
July 14, 2026 at 11:45 AM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
bookscribbler.bsky.social
Can't wait to read this! Ann Blair's work played a fundamental role in shaping my understanding to the kinds of #agency embedded in the #earlymodern #writing and #reading practices that shaped #health and #naturalhistory #information #systems. #bookhistory #hstm

press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
In the Scholar’s Workshop
The hidden hands behind history’s great scholarly works
press.princeton.edu
July 7, 2026 at 8:19 AM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
wantedinrome.bsky.social
Bologna opens a new library containing more than 32,000 books from Umberto Eco's private study - arranged exactly as he left them - a decade after his death.
Umberto Eco library opens in Bologna, 10 years after his death
The University of Bologna has opened a new public library housing the personal book collection of writer Umberto Eco, a decade after his death.
www.wantedinmilan.com
July 7, 2026 at 9:04 AM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
tedunderwood.com
Pretty good guidance in this viz. My shorthand would be: "if it matters who is speaking, and whose perspective or idiom is being represented, then be very cautious."
Alt text: A hand-drawn style chart titled “What should we let AI write?” maps writing tasks along two axes: left to right moves from mechanical to ideas-led genres, and bottom to top increases AI involvement. A legend marks green as “Yes,” yellow as “Edge case,” and red as “No.” Most of the lower area is green, suggesting AI is acceptable for tasks like proofreading, fact-checking, research, brainstorming, red-teaming, light edits, and some polishing. The upper-right area is red, suggesting AI should not substantially write more ideas-led work such as op-eds, political speeches, and novels, especially as one-shot or heavily AI-driven drafting. A yellow transition band runs diagonally through the middle, marking ambiguous cases like notes-to-draft or AI polish for business memos, academic papers, news analysis, and reports. Categories along the bottom include admin email, terms and conditions, data summary, lit review, business memo, academic paper, news analysis, think-tank report, op-ed, political speech, and novel. The right side lists increasing AI involvement from “AI proofread” at the bottom to “One-shot AI” at the top.
June 30, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
eve.gd
It is curious. In radical open access circles, since the early 2010s, it has become accepted that one of commoning publication practices is, and should be, "care".

This is derived theoretically from Mol, Annemarie, The Logic of Care: Health and the Problem of Patient Choice (Routledge, 2008).
June 26, 2026 at 7:54 AM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
eayers0.bsky.social
Call for abstracts for Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine extended to June 26! Hosted by Johns Hopkins this year, this is a great opp for grad students to workshop their research, practice giving talks + meet others in the field. The JAS's are great.

jashistofmed.wordpress.com
Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine
Visit the post for more.
jashistofmed.wordpress.com
June 24, 2026 at 3:04 PM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
centrephilohistory.bsky.social
There's now also a poster for our November conference Learning from History: The Philosophies of Historiography and the Historical Sciences. The submission deadline is in the end of August. Please spread the word, and come to Ostrava to discuss the historical sciences and their philosophy with us!
June 17, 2026 at 7:32 AM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
sthv.bsky.social
This coming Monday we kick off our second instalment of the ST&HV STS School, this time in Seoul. 4 days of seminars, workshops, plenaries and field trips, hosted by the Department of Science Studies at Seoul National University and KAIST Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy. So excited!
June 17, 2026 at 10:29 AM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
jcohencole.bsky.social
www.repubblica.it/cultura/2026...
Carlo Ginzburg è morto, addio al grande storico italiano
Aveva 87 anni. Era famoso in tutto il mondo per le sue ricerche sulla stregoneria e le credenze popolari
www.repubblica.it
June 17, 2026 at 10:34 AM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
rensbod.bsky.social
Out today: History of Humanities 11.1! With everything you never knew about printing Devanagari, reconstructing the Venus de Milo, and Ranke's seminar -- as well as a thought-provoking essay "Against Knowledge in the Humanities", and several book reviews!

www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/hoh/curr...
History of Humanities | Vol 11, No 1
www.journals.uchicago.edu
May 29, 2026 at 11:01 AM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
ejonesimhotep.bsky.social
It's publication day for The Broken Machine (@mitpress.bsky.social)! The book explores the intertwined histories of breaking machines, social order, and the self in the modern Atlantic, revealing how failing technologies have also shaped our world. mitpress.mit.edu/978026255334...

#sts #histtech
May 19, 2026 at 1:57 PM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
miguelohn.bsky.social
Now out: How did earthquakes come to have a (quantitative) size? How can we quantify without experimental control? @cristianlarph.bsky.social and I answer both questions and show their implications for human science measurement.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#philsci #histsci #seismology
Lessons for human science measurement from the quantification of earthquake size
It remains controversial whether the human sciences can quantify the phenomena they study. The feasibility of quantification is usually assessed by id…
www.sciencedirect.com
March 7, 2026 at 3:21 PM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
sjangtenhagen.bsky.social
Just published: our introduction to the history of peer review in the humanities! (with Marie-Gabrielle Verbergt) link.springer.com/article/10.1...
The Past and Present of Peer Review in the Humanities: An Introduction - Minerva
This Introduction to the Special Issue “The Past and Present of Peer Review in the Humanities” situates the currently dominant evaluative regime of peer review within a longer and broader history of s...
link.springer.com
November 13, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
metacramer.bsky.social
Very happy to share that my monograph on the negotiation of global asymmetries of science has been recently published! bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/colonial-leg...
Colonial Legacies and Global Inequalities in the Anglo-Caribbean
Colonial Legacies and Global Inequalities in the Anglo-Caribbean - Negotiating Social Knowledge Production in Research and Career-Making; This book examines how Anglo-Caribbean scholars navigate globa...
bristoluniversitypress.co.uk
November 10, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
sjangtenhagen.bsky.social
Four articles from our Special Issue "The Past and Present of Humanities Peer Review" in Minerva are available now. Two more articles, along with a general introduction, will follow shortly! link.springer.com/collections/...
The Past and Present of Humanities Peer Review
Peer review, i.e. the institutionalized evaluation of scholars and their outputs by others working in the same field, is fundamental to knowledge production ...
link.springer.com
October 30, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
hu-rmz.bsky.social
In next week's Jour Fixe, @alexcsiszar.bsky.social (Harvard University) will present on "Exporting publication standards: Eugene Garfield's global travels"
www.rmz.hu-berlin.de...
29.10.25, 11 CET, join us in person/ via zoom (link on website)!
@ibi-hu.bsky.social
RMZ Jour fixe/ Exporting publication standards: Eugene Garfield's global travels
Alex Csiszar (Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, USA)
www.rmz.hu-berlin.de
October 22, 2025 at 2:53 PM
alexcsiszar.bsky.social
I at last got to sit down and read “Limits of the Numerical” ed. @annaalexandrova.bsky.social, Stephen John, and @cnewf.bsky.social. This is a great book. It pushes against some of our received STS wisdom about quantification in super productive ways. Essential!
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
Limits of the Numerical
This collection examines the uses of quantification in climate science, higher education, and health.   Numbers are both controlling and fragile. They drive public policy, figuring into everything fro...
press.uchicago.edu
August 24, 2025 at 12:35 AM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
erantal.bsky.social
Onilne workshop on quantification! The Society for the Study of Measurement is delighted to host an event on the philosophy, sociology, and history of quantification across the sciences on August 9. Free with registration. #philsci #philsky #histsci #histtech #sts #sociology 🧪 tinyurl.com/5rn7p7sk
Quantification in History, Philosophy, Sociology, and Practice – The Society for the Study of Measurement
tinyurl.com
July 6, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
sarahebull.bsky.social
I've long been fascinated by the fact that wood engravings for newspaper illustrations were often based on photographs (e.g. of the Crimean War front) in the 1860s, but I hadn't really considered that photography would be used to reproduce/pirate engravings this early! #needtoreadmorearthistory
Caution to Photographers — At Bow Street, on Saturday, Sidney Powell, and a dealer in photographic prints, of Chandos Street, Covent Garden, appeared to answer a summons at the instances of Mr. Ernest Gambark, charging him first, with having copied, or caused to be copied, an engraving of the "Horse Fair" without his consent; and secondly, with exposing the same for sale. Mr. Gambitt said he gave £1,600 for the picture and copyright, and 800 guineas for the engraving. The defendant and others immediately laid hold of his engravings, photographed them, and injured his sale. He was determined to prosecute in every case. The magistrate reserved his decision on the point of law as be the construction of the set. "Caution to Photographers," Carlisle Examiner and North Western Advertiser - Tuesday 04 November 1862, 4.
March 3, 2025 at 2:08 PM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
williamthomas.bsky.social
The Democrats on the House Science Committee have set up a website to collect stories from fired federal employees, anonymously if desired democrats-science.house.gov/sciencefirings
Were you fired by President Trump? | House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
democrats-science.house.gov
February 18, 2025 at 11:09 PM
Reposted by Alex Csiszar
hsnatsci.bsky.social
At the beginning of the semester, if questions of AI in academia are stressing you out, could I suggest reading through our most recent set of essays? online.ucpress.edu/hsns/issue/5...
Volume 54 Issue 5 | Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences | University of California Press
online.ucpress.edu
January 14, 2025 at 9:08 PM