The Garching nuclear egg: Teaching contemporary history beyond the linguistic turn

I contrast this approach by drawing on experiences of taking students to the Atomei, Germany's oldest research reactor at the Garching campus of the Munich University of Technology. Decommissioned since 2000, the installation and its history are still controlled by scientists. Studying contemporary laboratories and their materiality has so far been the domain of sociologists and ethnographers. I argue for opening these spaces to historians of science and engaging with the 'unfinished' material world of contemporary science. Taking the material seriously beyond the linguistic turn and asking students to explore laboratories and other sites of knowledge production challenges existing histories and historiographies. By exploring local university departments and their recent histories through their material heritage, we can observe everyday science and confront scientists and technicians' cultures with those of historians'. By engaging with recent material heritage as historians and archivists, students can make an important contribution to enhancing the awareness about this heritage, its implications for history writing, as well as its documentation and preservation.