The project “Translated Culture? Habsburg Science as Pluricultural Sphere” investigates the commonalities between Habsburg culture(s) from a translational perspective. It proceeds from the thesis that the monarchy consisted of a dense communicative network, which—while broken up by the nationalization of cultures over the course of the 19th century—never disappeared from day-to-day practices. Jan Surman traces the contours of this common imperial semiosphere (Yuri Lotman) by studying translations of scientific and scholarly literature. This method enables an analysis of the shifts in meaning in scientific textsgenerated by translation from one language to another. In addition, the diverging and unifying elements of the imperial scientific community become visible, a finding that underscores the theory that Habsburg science can be described as a common cultural sphere.

Jan Surman studied Sociology and History at the University of Vienna and at Paris IV-Sorbonne. He completed his doctoral studies in 2012 as part of the Initiativkolleg “The Natural Sciences in Historical Context” with the dissertation Habsburg Universities 1848–1918: Biography of a Space. From 2014 to 2017 he held a postdoctoral research position at the Herder Institute in Marburg, and in summer semester 2017 he was a guest researcher at the Max-Weber-Kolleg in Erfurt. He was the 2009–2010 CAS/BMWF Research Fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Austrian Studies, and in 2011 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. He has held scholarships and conducted research in Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, and in the USA (Princeton). His research interests include 19th- and 20th-century intellectual history and history of science, with emphasis on the Habsburg monarchy, Eastern Europe, and East-Central Europe; science and translation; and the history of scientific languages.