Sven Dupré

Research Group Director

Dr., Professor of History of Knowledge, Institute for Art History, Freie Universität Berlin

Residence: July 1, 2011 - September 30, 2016

Profile

Sven Dupré, previously Director of the Centre of History of Science at Ghent University, is Professor of History of Knowledge at the Institute for Art History at the Freie Universität Berlin and Research Group Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. He has held visiting positions at the Flemish Academic Centre for Science and the Arts (Institute for Advanced Study) in Brussels, the Institute for History and Foundations of Science of the University of Utrecht, the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science of the University of Cambridge, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and at the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science at the University of Sydney.

Following his Ph.D dissertation on Galileo, Sven Dupré published widely in books and journals on the history of optics and Renaissance mathematical culture in various geographical and institutional contexts. His research interests include the material culture of science and the history of collecting. At Ghent university he directed an international research network on the circulation of knowledge in the early modern Low Countries. His current research intersects the histories of science and art and is geared towards writing an epistemic history of art which examines how early modern artists appropriated, invented, conceived, categorized, and transmitted knowledge.

 He is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Isis, Science in Context and Studium, and a corresponding member of the International Academy of History of Science/Académie Internationale d’ Histoire des Sciences in Paris.