The Humanities Laboratory
From Design to Archaeology
Published on 15. September 2025
Book
Hardback
386 pages
978-3-631-92107-4 (ISBN)
Description
This book explores the epistemic status and potential of humanities laboratories. It investigates the history of such laboratories, while contributing to debates on designing contemporary forms of labs. The book traces the trend for laboratories in the humanities since the mid-nineteenth century, outlining a multitude of projects across diverse times and spaces.
We are interested in what makes humanities laboratories different from their scientific relatives. Can a humanities lab and those investigating natural sciences even be considered as related? Or should the relationship between them be seen transversally, outside of the opposition between the humanities and the natural and formal sciences?
We argue that the humanities laboratory should not be based on the idea of mimesis and imitate a scientific lab, but rather operate according to the principle of mimicry. Only in this way can the humanities fulfil their self-critical function.
More details
Persons
Aleksandra Kil-Matlak holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Wroclaw, where she co-founded the Laboratory of Contemporary Humanities. She has contributed to Digital Humanities Quarterly and co-authored Issue Mapping for an Ageing Europe (2018). Her recent book, published in Polish, explores index cards and the analogue humanities.
Jacek Malczynski is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Cultural Studies, University of Wroclaw. He co-edited "The Environmental History of the Holocaust", a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research (2020), and Knowledge in the Shadow of Catastrophe (2024).
Dorota Wolska was a Professor at the Institute of Cultural Studies at the University of Wroclaw. Her areas of interest included cultural theory, the philosophy of the humanities, and aesthetics. As editor-in-chief of the Polish journal Prace Kulturoznawcze, she edited volumes on non-human culture, axiotic spaces of culture, and postsecularity.
Content
Contents
Introduction
Aleksandra Kil-Matlak, Jacek Ma (3)czynski, Dorota Wolska
What Goes on in Humanities Laboratories?
Part 1: Humanities Laboratories
Chapter 1
Aleksandra Kil-Matlak, Jacek Ma (3)czynski, Dorota Wolska
The Tricky Case of Claude Levi-Strauss's Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale
Chapter 2
Jacek Ma (3)czynski
The Laboratory as a "Soap Bubble": Juri Lotman, the Tartu-Moscow school and the Laboratory of History and Semiotics
Chapter 3
Miros (3)aw Kocur
Jerzy Grotowski's Laboratory Theatre: A Laboratory in Search of the Truth
Chapter 4
Aleksandra Kil-Matlak
An Archaeology of the Humanities Infrastructure: Paul Otlet and Laboratorium Mundaneum
Chapter 5
Karolina Charewicz-Jakubowska
The Private Banker of Academia: The case of Aby Warburg's Laboratory of Cultural-Scientific Picture-History
Part 2: Laboratorisation of the Humanities
Chapter 6
Krzysztof GBPukasiewicz
The Laboratory Effect: Laboratories in Leipzig at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Chapter 7
Adam Pisarek
The Laboratorisation of the Field: The Formation of the Anthropological Mode of Knowledge
Chapter 8
Rafa (3) Nahirny
Jeremy Bentham and the Formation of the Laboratory of Power-Knowledge
Part 3: The Post-humanist laboratory
Chapter 9
Magdalena Zamorska
The Humanities Laboratory and Neoliberal Academia: The case of SenseLab
Chapter 10
Joanna Sieracka
Swarm in the Post-humanities Laboratory: On Collective Research Practices from a Post-humanist Perspective
Introduction
Aleksandra Kil-Matlak, Jacek Ma (3)czynski, Dorota Wolska
What Goes on in Humanities Laboratories?
Part 1: Humanities Laboratories
Chapter 1
Aleksandra Kil-Matlak, Jacek Ma (3)czynski, Dorota Wolska
The Tricky Case of Claude Levi-Strauss's Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale
Chapter 2
Jacek Ma (3)czynski
The Laboratory as a "Soap Bubble": Juri Lotman, the Tartu-Moscow school and the Laboratory of History and Semiotics
Chapter 3
Miros (3)aw Kocur
Jerzy Grotowski's Laboratory Theatre: A Laboratory in Search of the Truth
Chapter 4
Aleksandra Kil-Matlak
An Archaeology of the Humanities Infrastructure: Paul Otlet and Laboratorium Mundaneum
Chapter 5
Karolina Charewicz-Jakubowska
The Private Banker of Academia: The case of Aby Warburg's Laboratory of Cultural-Scientific Picture-History
Part 2: Laboratorisation of the Humanities
Chapter 6
Krzysztof GBPukasiewicz
The Laboratory Effect: Laboratories in Leipzig at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Chapter 7
Adam Pisarek
The Laboratorisation of the Field: The Formation of the Anthropological Mode of Knowledge
Chapter 8
Rafa (3) Nahirny
Jeremy Bentham and the Formation of the Laboratory of Power-Knowledge
Part 3: The Post-humanist laboratory
Chapter 9
Magdalena Zamorska
The Humanities Laboratory and Neoliberal Academia: The case of SenseLab
Chapter 10
Joanna Sieracka
Swarm in the Post-humanities Laboratory: On Collective Research Practices from a Post-humanist Perspective