The European Science Foundation (ESF) and the Foundation for the History of Technology in the Netherlands are jointly organizing the Launch Conference of the ESF EUROCORES Programme Inventing Europe in conjunction with the Third Plenary Conference of the Tensions of Europe Network (ToE). The ESF EUROCORES Programme Inventing Europe and ToE strive, through collaborative research and coordinating efforts, to promote studies of the interplay between technical change and European history. Instead of focusing on national histories, the emphasis of both initiatives is on transnational technological developments that have shaped and are shaping Europe. For scholars interested in the role of technology in European history this event will provide a unique opportunity not only to present and discuss current and envisaged new research, but also to create new networks and plan coordinated activities for some years to come.

We encourage scholars from all disciplines who study subjects related to the areas below to submit abstracts for the research sessions and roundtables organised by the Tensions of Europe network. These areas are drawn from the Inventing Europe themes (see http://www.esf.org/inventingeurope) and the Tensions of Europe Intellectual Agenda (see www.histech.nl/tensions ). Overall Theme of the Conference The conference seeks contributions that will treat technological change as an entry point into the contested practice of Europeanization. Four general areas to be explored are:

• Building Europe through Infrastructures, or, how Europe has been shaped by the material links of transnational infrastructure
• Constructing European Ways of Knowing, or, how Europe became articulated through efforts to unite knowledge and practices on a European scale
• Consuming Europe, or, how actors reworked consumer goods and artefacts for local, regional, national, European, and global use
• Europe in the Global World, or, how Europe has been created through colonial, ex-colonial, trans- Atlantic, and other global exchanges
• Synthetic methodological or historiographical explorations of the role of technology in transnational European history Sessions formats The Program Committee welcomes proposals that address the overall conference themes in the following two formats:

• Research sessions with three papers based on original research, and an invited commentator. Because the conference encourages debate, appropriate time for discussion should be allocated to the commentators as well as the members of the audience. The papers will be pre-circulated to all conference participants. Conference participants are expected to have read the papers thus presentations should be brief.

• Roundtable sessions with an open agenda or one paper to start-off the discussion. The sessions will host no more than six discussants including the organizer and the chair. The organizer is responsible for preparing a dialogue paper to stimulate debate, and if relevant, supplementary material. Ideally, the dialogue paper will be a brief piece that poses a number of historical problems and/or questions related to the conference theme that will be addressed in the debate. While the organizer should propose discussants, the Program Committee may make additional suggestions. The chair may decide either to limit the conversation to invited roundtable discussants or to allow the audience to ask questions and enter the debate.

Research sessions will be allotted a minimum time slot of one and a half hours, and roundtable discussions one hour.