Curie in the Congo: The Science of Business and the Business of Science

Presentation of a research project as part of the "Jeudis de la Maison Suger", a residents' research seminar.

This session will host Jayita Sarkar for a presentation on her research into cultural and scientific exchanges on a transnational scale. Her talk will highlight the dynamics of knowledge circulation and the contemporary issues linked to the globalisation of science.

Presentation of the project

"This presentation examines the intersections of science, economy, and empire within the context of global nuclear histories. Focusing on Marie Curie's relationships with the Belgian company Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK), which supplied her with materials from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Congo for her Radium Institutes in Paris and Warsaw, the study highlights the close connections between scientists and industrialists, which underpinned the mechanisms of empire. It emphasises the need to develop global histories of capitalism and science, paying particular attention to extractivist logics in dependent spaces linked to nuclear fission."

Speaker

Jayita Sarkar is Professor of Global History of Inequalities at the University of Glasgow's School of Social and Political Sciences. Her research and teaching areas are global and transnational histories of capitalism, infrastructures, and territoriality. She is the author of the award-winning book, Ploughshares and Swords. India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022). Jay is currently completing her next book, Atomic Capitalism. A Global History for Princeton University Press. She is a visiting professor at École Normale Supérieure Paris Rue d’Ulm from March to May 2026.