CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HISTORY OF PHYSICS & TECHNOSCIENCE
Work at the intersection of research infrastructures, state power, international collaboration, and geopolitics:
Barbara Hof, Grigoris Panoutsopoulos & Climério Silva Neto, 2025. “Competing for Collaboration on Particle Accelerators in the Multipolar Cold War World”. [linked here].
Barbara Hof, 2025. “Fusion Divided: What Prevented European Collaboration on Controlled Thermonuclear Fusion in 1958”. [linked here].
Spotlight: https://www.aip.org/history/hof-cern-fusion
Barbara Hof, Gerardo Ienna & Simone Turchetti, 2024. “The Protest That Never Was: Silencing Political Activism at CERN before and during the Vietnam War”. [linked here].
Barbara Hof, 2024 “Science for All at CERN”. [linked here].
Barbara Hof, 2024. “Science for Vietnam: Grassroots Activism in East-West Relations in the 1970s”. [linked here].
Barbara Hof, 2024. “Particles, Purity, Politics: Expanding International Exchange in High-Energy Physics during the Cold War”. [linked here].
Barbara Hof, 2024. “Knowledge for Free? Why two US American ‘Mobile Radioisotope Training Laboratories’ Embarked on a World Tour in 1958”. [linked here].
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HISTORY OF ED TECH & THE THREE C (CYBERNETICS, CONSTRUCTIVISM, COGNITIVISM)
These studies are the result of multi-archival research, oral history interviews and collaborations with historians of education, as well as with communication and media scholars. While I’m no longer actively researching this topic, I contribute through reviews and feedback:
Barbara Hof, 2024. “Theoretical Foundations and Historical Roots of the ‘Automated Classroom’”. [linked here].
Katie D. Good and Barbara Hof, 2024. “Towards Global and Local Histories of Educational Technologies: Introduction”. [linked here].
Barbara Hof, 2024. “Defuturization Machines. The OECD’s Early Efforts to Plan the Computerized Future of Education”. [linked here].
Barbara Hof and Regula Bürgi, 2021. “The OECD as an Arena for Debate on the Future Uses of Computers in Schools”. [linked here].
Barbara Hof and Jan Müggenburg, 2021. “Human – Learning – Machines. Introduction to a Special Section on How Cybernetics and Constructivism Inspired new Forms of Learning”. [linked here].
Barbara Hof, 2021. “The Turtle and the Mouse. How Constructivist Learning Theory Shaped Artificial Intelligence and Educational Technology in the 1960s”. [linked here].
Barbara Hof, 2018. “Der Bildungstechnologe”. [linked here].
Barbara Hof, 2018. “From Harvard via Moscow to West Berlin: Educational Technology, Programmed Instruction and the Commercialisation of Learning after 1957”. [linked here].
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC MODELING
My early research explores how cyberneticians defined and deployed models. It includes an editorial and two articles:
Editorial Team, 2024. Epistemologies of Data. [linked here].
Barbara Hof, 2018. “The Cybernetic ‘General Model Theory’: Unifying Science or Epistemic Change?” [linked here].
Barbara Hof, 2016. “Modelle: Ein implizites Vermächtnis der deutschen kybernetischen Pädagogik”. [linked here].
NON-JURIED ESSAYS
Ksenia Tatarchenko, Barbara Hof & Arianna Borrelli, 2025. “‘The Computer in Motion’: Symposium Report from the 27th International Congress of History of Science and Technology (ICHST)” [linked here].
Barbara Hof, 2021 “Mais Qui est Donc le Monstre ? A Propos d’Agentivité et de Responsabilité dans la Relation entre l’Humain et la Machine”. [linked here].
Barbara Hof, 2021. “Kein Ende in Sicht. Bildung im Atomzeitalter in historischer und aktueller Perspektive”. [linked here].
Marcelo Caruso, Barbara Hof, Joakim Landahl, Lilli Riettiens and Eugenia Roldán Vera, 2020. “Perspectives on Transnational and Transatlantic Research in History of Education”. [linked here].
Jona Garz and Barbara Hof, 2020. “From the Purgatory of Science”. [linked here].
Barbara Hof, 2018. “Three Arguments why Post- and Transhumanism Need to be Viewed from a long-term Historical Perspective”. [linked here].
REVIEWS
Review of Michael D. Gordin and W. Patrick McCray (Ed.), Greedy Science. Creating Knowledge, Making Money, and Being Famous in the 1980s. [linked here].
Review of Carola Sachse, Wissenschaft und Diplomatie: Die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft im Feld der internationalen Politik (1945–2000). [linked here].
Review of Darren Wershler, Lori Emerson, and Jussi Parikka, The Lab Book: Situated Practices in Media Studies. [linked here].
Review Article of Barbara Curli, “The Origins of Euratom’s Research on Controlled Thermonuclear Fusion: Cold War Politics and European Integration, 1958–1968”. [linked here].
Review of Cyrus Mody, The Squares: US Physical and Engineering Scientists in the Long 1970s. [linked here].
Review of Kevin Driscoll, The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media. [linked here].
Review of Alex Wellerstein, Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States. [linked here].
Review of Katie D. Good, Bring the World to the Child, Technologies of Global Citizenship in American Education. [linked here].
Review Article “The Binary Semantics of the Cold War and the Figure of the Third.” Frank Reichherzer, Emmanuel Droit, Jan Hansen (Hrsg.), Den Kalten Krieg vermessen, Über Reichweite und Alternativen einer binären Ordnungsvorstellung. In: IJHE, 9(1), 2019: 107-110.
Review of Joy Lisi Rankin, A People’s History of Computing in the United States. [linked here].
Review Article “Reflections on the Cultural Turn in Historical Writing.” Konrad Jarausch, Christian Ostermann, Andreas Etges (Eds.), The Cold War, Historiography, Memory, Representation. In: IJHE, 8(2), 2018: 227-230.
Review of Jan Müggenburg, Lebhafte Artefakte, Heinz von Foerster und die Maschinen des Biological Computer Laboratory. [linked here].
Review of Brian Dear, The Friendly Orange Glow, The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture. [linked here].
Review of Christopher D. Hollings, Scientific Communication Across the Iron Curtain. [linked here].
Review of David Glauser, Berufsbildung oder Allgemeinbildung, Soziale Ungleichheit beim Übergang in die Sekundarstufe II in der Schweiz. [linked here].
Review of Andreas Kaminski Andreas Gelhard (Hg.), Zur Philosophie informeller Technisierung. In: Vierteljahresschrift für wissenschaftliche Pädagogik, 1, 2016: 204-206.
Review of William Thomas, Rational Action, The Sciences of Policy in Britain and America, 1940-1960. [linked here].
Review of Alfons Bora, Anna Henkel und Reinhard Carsten (Hg.), Wissensregulierung und Regulierungswissen. [linked here].
Review of Enno Aljets, Der Aufstieg der empirischen Bildungsforschung, Ein Beitrag zur institutionalistischen Wissenssoziologie. [linked here].