Maria Paula Diogo awarded the Leonardo da Vinci medal, the highest honor attributed by the Society for the History of Technology

Professor Maria Paula Diogo has been received the Leonardo da Vinci Medal 2020, the highest honor from the Society for the History of Technology, awarded to an individual with a notable contribution to History of Technology, through research, teaching, publications, service to the Society, and other activities. The distinction is awarded since 1962, and has among its laureates foundational names of History of Technology, like Melvin Kranzberg, Joseph Needham, and Lewis Mumford. CIUHCT congratulates Maria Paula Diogo and expresses its profound pride in this distinction, fruit of many years of working together, and certainly a reference to future historians in this scientific area.

Maria Paula Diogo is Full Professor at the NOVA School of Science and Technology, NOVA University of Lisbon, and has been a pioneer in the field of History of Technology in Portugal, having contributed decisively to shape an active community of historians of science and technology, largely through CIUHCT, where she was both coordinator and vice-coordinator for 12 years (2007-2019).

Maria Paula Diogo's career is vast, and her research interests are centred in imperial technology and engineering, the dialogue between History of Technology and the concept of the Anthropocene, and techno-scientific diplomacy. She has a long list of international publications, and has been an active member of research networks STEP (Science and Technology in European Periphery) and Tensions of Europe, also acting in many important History of Science and Technology societies (SHOT, ICOHTEC, ESHS). Her most recent books are Europeans Globalizing: Mapping, Exploiting, Exchanging (Palgrave, 2016, with Dirk Van Laak) and Gardens and Human Agency in the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2019, with Ana Simões, Ana Duarte Rodrigues, and Davide Scarso). Her most recent and ambitious project is part of CIUHCT's agenda — co-editing four volumes on History of Science, Technology and Medicine in Portugal — which will be published very soon.

The ceremony of the Leonardo da Vinci medal is typically one of the solemn sessions of the Society for the History of Technology's annual meetings, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020's meeting, taking place between October 8 and 11, will be fully online, with the session being transferred to the 2021 meeting, to take place in New Orleands.