Ana Simões, Vice-President of the European Society for the History of Science

The 9th Conference of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS) took place online, from August 31 to September 3 2020, as Ana Simões ended her mandate as President. According to the rotation system practised by the ESHS, Ana Simões will now be Vice-President for the next two years (2020-2022), with Theo Arabatzis as President, and Dana Jalobeanu as President-Elect. In the General Assembly that took place on September 3, Maria Paula Diogo was also reelected to the ESHS Scientific Council, thus assuring that CIUHCT continues to be represented in this body of the Society.

The European Society for the History of Science (ESHS) Conferences are special forums to affirm ESHS's vision of a plural history of science in its various dimensions (geographic, career and gender, thematic and methodological). They meet the needs of an increasingly diverse and multicontinental ESHS group, in an open dialogue with other historians of science. The theme of the 9th Conference was the “Visual, Material and Sensory Cultures of Science”, organized jointly by ESHS and the Italian Society for the History of Science at the University of Bologna was a vibrant example of this plurality. It brought together almost 600 participants from 5 continents, 40 countries and, with 11 parallel sessions, covered a variety of topics, historical periods and approaches. This happened virtually and was the first virtual conference of this size in this discipline. It will be a remarkable example of our community's adaptive creativity in addressing the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and exploring the opportunities offered by the world of virtual conferences.