Prof. Dr. Maria Rentetzi

Biographical Note

Maria Rentetzi is one of a handful of scholars working at the intersection of science and technology studies, nuclear diplomacy, and gender. Her research focuses on two intertwined areas of inquiry: the investigation of the politically and historically situated character of technoscience and the critical examination of gender as a major analytic category in technoscientific endeavors. She is an affiliate of the Max Planck Institute for History of Science (MPIWG) and was previously a guest professor at TU Berlin, a Silverman Professor at Tel Aviv University in Israel, and a professor at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). She joined FAU in January 2021.

Rentetzi has been trained as a physicist at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She received her MA in History of Science and Technology from NTUA, and a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from Virginia Tech, USA. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow and guest scholar at MPIWG and a Lise Meitner Fellow of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). She has received multiple international awards for her scholarship, including the Gutenberg-e Prize of the American Historical Society and one of the most prestigious grants in Europe, the ERC Consolidator grant (HRP-IAEA, Grant agreement ID: 770548). Her ERC project focuses on the history of radiation protection and the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency in setting radiation standards after World War II. Through her ERC project, she currently leads the development of a new strand of research: Diplomatic Studies of Science. Rentetzi is a corresponding member of the International Academy of History of Science; a member of AcademiaNet (nominated by FWF as an excellent female researcher); a council member of IUHPST/DHST; former president of the Commission of Gender and Women in STEM of the IUHPST/DHST (2013-2021); and a founding member and treasurer of the Association of ERC Grantees. She was a scientific advisor to the Greek alternate minister of foreign affairs on science diplomacy (2017-2018), is a member of FAU’s excellence committee, and leads FAU’s internationalization strategy.

Rentetzi has published widely on the history of radioactivity and the nuclear sciences, on gender and science, and on Greece’s history of tobacco culture and technology. Her books include Trafficking Materials and Gender Experimental Practices (2007, Columbia University Press); Boxes: A Field Guide (co-edited with S. Bauer and M. Schlünder, 2020, Mattering Press); and Seduced By Radium: How Industry Commodified Science in the American Marketplace (Pittsburgh University Press, forthcoming). She has also curated 101 Notes on Oriental Tobacco, a museum exhibition on tobacco technologies and gender practices in processing tobacco in early twentieth-century Greece. She is currently working on a book called The Gender of Things (co-edited with Aida Bosch) about the ways epistemic and technological objects become gendered. Together with Emily Winterburn, she is also editing The Cosmos, the first volume of Gender, Colonialism, and Science (1750-1950): A Cross-Cultural Compendium of Primary Sources (Routledge), a major project in gender science studies directed by Donald L. Opitz and Banu Subramanian.

Research Interests

• science, technology and gender studies
• diplomatic studies of science
• history and sociology of modern physical sciences
• history of radiation protection
• history of tobacco