Lecture of FIW-Scientist Kaat Louckx at the Dies Academicus 2025 Lecture of Kaat Louckx on May 14, 2025 “Questions of Modernity: How Asking Questions Shaped Our Modern World”

The lecture will take place at 16:15 in lecture hall IV (HS IV).

Abstract 

How did the seemingly simple act of asking structured questions shape modernity? This project traces the social and epistemic history of questionnaires, surveys, and interrogations from seventeenth-century scientific societies to early twentieth-century statistical congresses. Focusing on five arenas—scientific inquiry, state governance, professional expertise, legal interrogation, and transnational standardisation—it explores how formalised questioning produced new forms of knowledge and authority. Through comparative archival case studies from Europe and North America, the project aims to explain the emergence of categories like “household”, “occupation”, and “truth”, linking their history to contemporary debates on data ethics, citizenship, and surveillance. The lecture will outline the research agenda and its relevance across the humanities and social sciences.