"What makes this book distinctive is not only the breadth of its case studies but its programmatic ambition. It does not simply present overlooked sites; it proposes ways of studying them. By developing methods to analyse pavements, tree lines or animal inter actions as objects of urban science, the volume expands the scope of what counts as knowledge making and of who counts as a knowledge actor. It thus provides conceptual tools for approaching cities that lack famous academies or celebrated intellectuals, repositioning ‘ordinary’ urban spaces as central to the history of STEM. Enhanced by rich visual material and complemented by a digital mapping tool situating Lisbon’s STEM sites across time, the volume integrates local detail with broader historiographical innovation. [...] it establishes a methodological programme that could guide future studies of urban science. The result is a model for writing the history of science beyond exceptional cities, grounded in the infrastructures and everyday practices that made Lisbon and many other capitals techno-scientific organisms in their own right." — Stoeger Alexander, in: The British Journal for the History of Science (2026), pp. 1–5. [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087425101593]

Ana Simões, Ph.D. (1993), University of Maryland at College Park, USA, is Full Professor of History of Science at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, and Vice-President of the ESHS (2020-22). Recent publications include Gardens and Human Agency in the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2019).

Maria Paula Diogo, Ph.D. (1994), NOVA University, Portugal. She is Full Professor of History of Technology at NOVA School of Science and Technology. She is Leonardo da Vinci Medal (SHOT, 2020). Recent publications include Inventing a European Nation. Engineers for Portugal, from Baroque to Fascism (Morgan and Claypool, 2021).