Professional information

Short CV

Vangelis Koutalis is a PhD Candidate in the History and Epistemology of Chemistry, in the Department of Chemistry, University of Ioannina. He has graduated from the Department of Physics, University of Ioannina. In 2009, he successfully presented his Master’s Thesis with the title The Emergence of Chymistry under the Horizon of Renaissance Occultism (in Greek) to the Department of Chemistry (University of Ioannina). He has been Allington Fellow for three months, in Fall 2010, at the Chemical Heritage Foundation (Philadelphia, USA), conducting research on the relationship between chemical experimentation and philosophical conceptualizations, as exemplified in the work of Humphry Davy. For Michaelmas term 2011and Lent 2012 term, he was in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science in Cambridge University as a visiting researcher. From 2009 to 2011, he participated in the European research Programme HePHaESTUS (Hellenic Philosophy, History and Environmental Science Teaching Under Scrutiny), run by the Institute of Neohellenic Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation in collaboration with the Laboratory of Science Education, Epistemology and Educational Technology of the University of Athens. His main research topics, so far, have been: a) the emergence of “chymistry” during the 16th and 17th centuries through the appropriation of Renaissance Occultism or Christian Kabbalism, b) the epistemology of Joseph Priestley, c) the chemical philosophy of Humphry Davy, d) the historical reinterpretations of “chemical revolution”, e) the rhetorical dimension of knowing, and the history of dialectical thinking, especially with regard to the emergence of scientific discourses, f) the development of a demarcated field of knowledge, and a respective didactic tradition, concerning chemical phenomena in the Greek-speaking communities of SE Europe, during the 18th century, focusing especially on the unprinted manuscript textbooks of this period, and g) the development, as well as the historical influence, of Byzantine alchemy.

Long CV

https://www.hpdst.gr/system/files/cv-koutalis-2013-en.pdf