Engineer and spy. University outreach course (2017)

Courses

University outreach course organised by the National Distance University’s (UNED) Associate Centre in Segovia in conjunction with Fundación Juanelo Turriano, and hold in Segovia, from 20 to 22 October 2017.

This Spanish language course addresses the espionage conducted by European engineers in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Whilst many people were in a position to spy, from amateurs selling information to diplomats reporting to their governments, the description of other powers’ fortifications, machines or vessels required engineering expertise and was consequently entrusted to specifically trained professionals. There were traitors and turncoats, others who circulated scientific and technical information in courts far and wide and yet others who engaged in industrial espionage in their travels. Lessons on French espionage and the specifics of civil engineering add to the complexity of a subject that has not caught historians’ attention to date, despite the rigour of recent research on Modern Age espionage.

Course management: Alicia Cámara Muñoz, Bernardo Revuelta Pol
Coordinator: Enrique Gallego Lázaro

Programme:
Friday, 20 October:
Spies, traitors and turncoats: fortification and espionage in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Fernando Cobos Guerra, PhD. architecture, ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Fortifications and Military Heritage expert

Engineers’ loyalty and the circulation of information in sixteenth century courts. Alicia Cámara Muñoz, Head of Art History Department, National Distance University

Saturday, 21 October:

French espionage missions, drawings and strategies in the Modern Age. Emilie d’Orgeix, Head of Art History Department, Michel de Montaigne University, Bordeaux III

Spying in the field and against the clock in the eighteenth century. Juan Miguel Muñoz Corbalán, full professor, University of Barcelona

Industrial espionage in the eighteenth century. Juan Helguera Quijada, professor of economic history, University of Valladolid

Civil engineering in Enlightenment Europe: seeing, learning, spying. Daniel Crespo Delgado, Fundación Juanelo Turriano, Complutense University of Madrid and Alfonso Luján Díaz, National Corps of Museum Curators

Sunday, 22 October:

Engineering and science as objects of espionage in the stacks custodied by the General Military Archive at Segovia. Visit to the archives. Enrique Gallego Lázaro, tutor, National Distance University associated unit, Segovia

Programme and online registration (In Spanish)