When I came to the summer school, I was still in the aftermath of submitting and defending my Master’s dissertation and I had been narrowly focused on it for the last few months. Thus, getting to meet other people and their varied topics and perspectives was extremely refreshing and allowed me to broaden my research questions. This was all the more crucial as I was still in the process of submitting my PhD proposal. Discussions with other researchers focused on transnational history and global perspectives helped me to integrate or better formulate some of these questions into my project.

My PhD proposal analyses the constructions and circulations of medical knowledge along Atlantic and Mediterranean networks, between the 1780s and the 1830s. Discussions at various GRAINES seminars focusing on transimperial networks and knowledge production have given me a lot to think about my project. For instance, listening to others’ reactions on a classic Kapil Raj’s text helped me to refine my articulation of local and global knowledge. This was also helped by the links drawn between this and Saunier’s analysis of scales. It encouraged me to conceive different kinds of scales relations instead of a merely hierarchical conceptualisation.

One of the main points of my research is to challenge the idea that the “creole” network by which the colonial physicians appropriated local knowledge in the Caribbeans was a “local” network, while the “Atlantic” network by which this knowledge circulated within French, American or British scientific circles was a “global” one. These discussions provided with new ideas and tools to face this dichotomy by articulating these networks in a more horizontal and polycentric way. Thus, rather than thinking in separated historical scales, like local appropriation and global circulation, these appear as a mix of transatlantic networks that play into each other.

In relation with this idea, I also picked up the concern on how to define these kinds of networks and exchanges of knowledge. A possible term could be trans-imperial rather than transnational, but we could also use more specific terms like translocal.

Another point came from the unconference workshop on the use of maps, which has challenged the basic approach I had of these tools, and has encouraged me to think of more effective ways to convey the information that I present in maps of the networks of hospitals or epidemics in the late 18th – early 19th century Atlantic world.

In conclusion, these new perspectives on scales, visualisation and terminology opened to me new paths in which I can continue my future PhD research.