Making and Unmaking Facts

This conference examines how facts, often imagined as inviolable truths, have historically been constructed, contested and entangled with values, in the context of South Asia. Focusing on the history of science, it traces shifts from meteorites to statistics, colonial botany to atlases and spreadsheets, to show how institutions, technologies and power shape factuality.

Questioning myths of a lost age of Truth and today’s 'post-truth' crisis, it asks what worlds existed before 'facts' and 'data'. We invite scholars to submit case studies from the history of science in South Asia that engage with these questions.

The conference is jointly organized by IIM Calcutta, the journal DECISION and the forum Fact or Value.