Humanities Laboratory

This book explores the epistemic status and potential of humanities laboratories. It investigates the history of such laboratories, while contributing to debates on designing contemporary forms of labs. The book traces the trend for laboratories in the humanities since the mid-nineteenth century, outlining a multitude of projects across diverse times and spaces.

We are interested in what makes humanities laboratories different from their scientific relatives. Can a humanities lab and those investigating natural sciences even be considered as related? Or should the relationship between them be seen transversally, outside of the opposition between the humanities and the natural and formal sciences?

We argue that the humanities laboratory should not be based on the idea of mimesis and imitate a scientific lab, but rather operate according to the principle of mimicry. Only in this way can the humanities fulfil their self-critical function.

Aleksandra Kil-Matlak holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Wrocław, where she co-founded the Laboratory of Contemporary Humanities. She has contributed to Digital Humanities Quarterly and co-authored Issue Mapping for an Ageing Europe (2018). Her recent book, published in Polish, explores index cards and the analogue humanities.

Jacek Małczyński is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Cultural Studies, University of Wrocław. He co-edited “The Environmental History of the Holocaust”, a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research (2020), and Knowledge in the Shadow of Catastrophe (2024).

Dorota Wolska was a Professor at the Institute of Cultural Studies at the University of Wrocław. Her areas of interest included cultural theory, the philosophy of the humanities, and aesthetics. As editor-in-chief of the Polish journal Prace Kulturoznawcze, she edited volumes on non-human culture, axiotic spaces of culture, and postsecularity.