Digital Archives of Science: Revisiting the Vestiges of Knowledge-Making
Alina Volynskaya
Mar 2026 · Studies in Digital History and Hermeneutics Book 12 · Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
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The archive of science preserves the sediments of scientific practices: drafts, protocols of rejected hypotheses and failed experiments, obsolete instruments and other vestiges of knowledge-making. As science becomes increasingly digital, so does its archive – transforming not only how the scientific past is preserved, but how it is interpreted and engaged with. Digital collections clearly differ from the traditional lieux de mémoire. Rather than tangible and authentic objects, they store data – processable, mutable, and dependent on computational infrastructures. How do these infrastructures shape our encounters with the scientific past? What happens to the vestiges of science when they turn into data?
Positioned at the intersection of Science Studies, Media Studies, and Digital Humanities, this book critically examines digital archives of science as infrastructures that mediate memory and knowledge. Drawing on a large
corpus of scientifi c collections across disciplines and combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, it explores the boundaries and possibilities introduced by these digital repositories. Ultimately, it asks what it means to
do history in and through digital archives.
The archive of science preserves the sediments of scientific practices: drafts, protocols of rejected hypotheses and failed experiments, obsolete instruments and other vestiges of knowledge-making. As science becomes increasingly digital, so does its archive – transforming not only how the scient...
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About the author
Alina Volynskaya, Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH), University of Luxembourg.
Alina Volynskaya, Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH), University of Luxembourg.
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