Archives as Public Space: The interplay of science, administration, art and history

Archives are an essential component of contextualizing science and its administration. The Archives at NCBS is a relatively new public collecting centre for the history of contemporary biology in India (http://archives.ncbs.res.in/). We have one underlying philosophy: archives enable diverse stories. And we see three main objectives for archives anywhere: continuing to build up the archive as a space to strengthen public spaces, a focus on education through archival material (the Archives has been host to 45 students across India and from 15 disciplines), and to build a broader consortium of science archives with a discovery layer for the public to find, describe and share archival material and stories. TIFR is well positioned to be a leader in this effort. We hope that a living, breathing constellation of archives can bridge the gaps between four silos: the scientists, historians of science, storytellers for a non-academic audience, and the public. 

About the Speaker:
Venkat Srinivasan is a visiting researcher and archivist at the Archives at NCBS, TIFR in Bangalore. He’s part of the team that set up the Archives at NCBS. He is also on the board of Oral History Association of India, and of the Commission on Bibliography and Documentation of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Prior to this, he was a research engineer at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University (https://lcls.slac.stanford.edu/overview). In addition, he is an independent science writer, with work in The Atlantic and Scientific American online, Nautilus, Aeon, Wired, and the Caravan.