Within the broad field of material culture, the network members decided to focus on four principal areas: the emergence of new objects within scientific enquiry; the relationships between scientific artefacts (e.g. instruments) and technological systems; scientific objects as historial evidence; and the interatction between scientific objects, images and texts. On its founding Meeting in 2005 the Network identified the following “branch” topics, to be dealt with by Subgroups of Members of the Network in cooperation with chosen colleagues or partners: