Sven Dupré

Sven Dupré is Professor and Chair of History of Art, Science and Technology at Utrecht University and Director of the project ‘Technique in the Arts: Concepts, Practices, Expertise, 1500-1950’, supported by a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant. Previously he was Professor of History of Knowledge at the Freie Universitat and Director of the Research Group ‘Art and Knowledge in Premodern Europe’ at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. His research has been supported by visiting fellowships at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) 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.

Dupré's research is at the crossroads of art history and the history of science and technology. He is a member of the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities at Utrecht University as well as actively involved in research in technical art history at the Ateliergebouw in Amsterdam, where the Rijksmuseum, the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands and the University of Amsterdam combine their knowledge in the field of restoration and preservation of art objects. Dupré has published on a wide range of topics on the history of early modern science, technology and art in Italy, the Spanish Netherlands, the German lands, Britain and France. Recent publications include: Laboratories of Art: Alchemy and Art Technology from Antiquity to the 18th Century (Springer, 2014),Art and Alchemy: The Mystery of Transformation (Hirmer, 2014) in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Translating Knowledge in the Early Modern Low Countries (LIT, 2012),From Earth-Bound to Satellite (Brill, 2012) and Silent Messengers (LIT, 2011). His work is also published in numerous journals, including Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Netherlands Yearbook for Art History, Synthese, and Intellectual History Review.

He is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Nuncius, Science in Context and Studium, an associate editor of History of Humanities, a former member of the advisory board of Isis, co-editor of Nuncius book series on material and visual history of science, and a member of the Académie Internationale d’ Histoire des Sciences in Paris. https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/staff/members/dupre