Charlotte Bigg

Professor Charlotte Bigg of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales is the 2024–2025 Dornsife-EHESS Visiting Professor at USC, in residence April 2025. She is hosted by the USC Dornsife Visual Studies Research Institute and the USC Dornsife Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life.

Charlotte Bigg is a permanent research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris. After earning degrees in history and history and philosophy of science from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, she worked at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and at ETH Zurich. She has published widely on the social and cultural history of the chemical, physical and astronomical sciences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in a transnational perspective. Her work examines the visual and material cultures of scientific practice and their circulation among a range of audiences. She is currently co-PI of two projects, one on the history of graphic design in the humanities and social sciences in the second half of the twentieth century, and another on the history of French colonial photographic archives. She is also currently working on the history of exploring, curating, and exhibiting geological collections.

The following programs have been organized as part of the visit:

• “From Colonial Science to Transnational Heritage? The Photographic Constellation of the Institut Français Afrique Noire”
  Friday, April 4 | 3:00 PM | Taper Hall 309K
  This event is presented through the NEH/VSRI “Images Out of Time” Seminar. MORE
• Undergraduate Lecture
  Monday, April 7
  This is not a public event.
• “Imaging the Universe: a History of Astronomy and Photography”
  Thursday, April 10 | 12:00 PM | Huntington Library
  This event is hosted by the Huntington Library. MORE
• “Exploring, Curating and Exhibiting the Origins of Life and of the Earth Since the Nineteenth Century”
  Tuesday, April 15 | 6:00 PM | Wyman Bar, Berggruen Institute
  This event is hosted by the Berggruen Institute. MORE

Header image: “Le Plus Grand Reseau du Monde,” Lucien Boucher,
Air France, 1964, David Rumsey Map Center