Announcements
A collection of STS news items, in the order submitted, including grants and awards, new books and other publications, and people news.
Last updated 08/31/2010 by Jay Burlingham.
Spontaneous Generations latest issue available online
http://spontaneousgenerations.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/SpontaneousGenerations/issue/view/1073
Updated: August 31 2010
Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science is pleased to announce the publication of its latest issue, Vol 4, No 1 (2010): "Scientific Instruments: Knowledge, Practice, and Culture"
Grinnell’s book Everday Practice of Science Makes Royal Society Prize Shortlist
http://royalsociety.org/Royal-Society-Prize-for-Science-Books-2010-shortlist-announced/
Updated: August 27 2010
Fred Grinnell's book Everyday Practice of Science has been selected as one of the six finalists in competition for the
2010 Royal Society Prize for Science Books, winner to be announced in London on October 21.
Travel Grants for Graduate Students to Attend 2011 AAAS Annual Meeting
Deadline: December 01 2010
Updated: August 16 2010
Thanks to a generous donation from a member, Section L (History & Philosophy of Science) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science will offer a limited number of travel grants to assist graduate students studying history or philosophy of science presenting posters at the Association's next Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, February 17-21, 2011 (http://www.aaas.org/meetings/).
The submission information for posters is at http://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2011/poster/cfp.cgi/ and October 25 is the submission deadline. The grant is to defray costs of travel, lodging, and registration, to a maximum of $500. Highest preference will be given to graduate students who are presenting posters or otherwise on the program; secondary preference will be given to those who serve as session aides at the meeting (see http://meeting2011.aaas.org/sessionaide/default.aspx).
To apply, send a CV, a statement of support from your advisor, and a brief statement why attending this meeting would benefit your program of study, to Jonathan Coopersmith, Secretary, Section L, AAAS, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). The deadline for application is December 1. Notification of awards will be made by December 15.
New Book from Roberto Abadie: The Professional Guinea Pig
http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=18847
Updated: August 05 2010
The Professional Guinea Pig documents the emergence of the professional research subject in Phase I clinical trials testing the safety of drugs in development. Until the mid-1970s, Phase I trials were conducted on prisoners. After that practice was outlawed, the pharmaceutical industry needed a replacement population and began to aggressively recruit healthy, paid subjects, some of whom came to depend on the income, earning their living by continuously taking part in these trials. Drawing on ethnographic research among self-identified “professional guinea pigs” in Philadelphia, Roberto Abadie examines their experiences and views on the conduct of the trials and the risks they assume by participating. Some of the research subjects he met had taken part in more than 80 Phase I trials. While Abadie found that the professional guinea pigs tended to believe that most clinical trials pose only a moderate health risk, he contends that the hazards presented by continuous participation, such as exposure to potentially dangerous drug interactions, are discounted or ignored by research subjects in need of money. The risks to professional guinea pigs are disregarded by the pharmaceutical industry, because it has become dependent on the routine participation of experienced research subjects. Arguing that financial incentives compromise the ethical imperative for informed consent to be freely given by clinical-trials subjects, Abadie confirms the need to reform policies regulating the participation of paid subjects in Phase I clinical trials.
“Roberto Abadie has given us a deep, complex, and profoundly disturbing investigation into the dark underside of the clinical trials industry. The Professional Guinea Pig is not just ethnography. It is a call to action.”—Carl Elliott, author of Better than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream
For more information, and to order the book directly from Duke University Press, please visit http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=18847
Grants - History of Electricity
Deadline: October 29 2010
Updated: July 15 2010
The EDF Foundation offers grants to graduate students. Four grants of 2500 euros each and three to six grants, varying from 1250 up to 2500 euros each, will be awarded under the supervision of the Committee for the History of Electricity of the EDF Foundation.
*The selection will be based on the following criteria: originality of the subject, preparation and quality of presentation of the project. The project must deal, at least partly, with the history of electricity in France, Europe or elsewhere in the world (but with a comparative approach with Europe in this case).
The payment of the grant will be conditional upon the signature of an agreement. The thesis or dissertation will be written either in French, English, German, Spanish or Italian. A 10-page summary in French will be required for the works which won¹t be in French.
The application will include:
- a letter in which the candidate requests a grant, gives the precise subject of his/her research, as defined with his/her supervisor, and binds him/herself to respect the agreement if he/she is selected ;
- a presentation of the research project mentioning the sources, the methodology, the questions to be raised, and a short bibliography (6 10p.);
- a detailed *curriculum vitae*;
- a description of the financial resources of the candidate during the research;
- a letter of recommendation from the research supervisor, appreciating the candidate and approving the project;
- a photocopy of the student card or an attestation of research delivered by the university or the research center the candidate is affiliated with.
The application must be sent in a folder or attached to an email stating the name, the forename, the postal address, the phone number and the electronic address of the candidate. *It must be mailed or emailed before the 29th of October, 2010*
E-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
American Association for the History of Medicine Award - William H. Welch Medal, 2011
Deadline: October 31 2010
http://www.histmed.org/awards.htm
Updated: July 15 2010
The William H. Welch Award is named in honor of a major American figure in the history of medicine and public health, who was among the first faculty at the Johns Hopkins medical school. The Medal was first presented in 1950, to Henry Sigerist, and is awarded to one or more authors of a book (excluding edited volumes) of outstanding scholarly merit in the field of medical history published during the five calendar years preceding the award. Hence, books published during 2005–2009 inclusively will be eligible for the 2011 Medal. Previously nominated books should be re-nominated each year that they are eligible; they will not be considered automatically. The Medal will be presented at the next annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 28 April – 1 May 2011. The chair of the Welch Medal Committee, Keith Wailoo, Ph.D., welcomes suggestions of books to consider for the award. To nominate a book, contact Dr. Wailoo at Department of History, Princeton University, 129 Dickinson Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544-1017 (e-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)). Deadline for nominations: 31 October 2010.
American Association for the History of Medicine Award - J. Worth Estes Award, 2011
Deadline: January 15 2011
http://www.histmed.org/awards.htm
Updated: July 15 2010
This award was established in honor of J. Worth Estes, M.D., in recognition of his many years of invaluable contributions to the American Association for the History of Medicine and to scholarship in the history of medicine. The award is made annually for the best published paper in the history of pharmacology during the previous two years, whether appearing in a journal or a book collection of papers. The choice of topic reflects Worth Estes’s long tenure as Professor of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at Boston University and his own scholarship in the history of pharmacology.
For the purpose of this award, the history of pharmacology will be defined broadly to include ancient and traditional material medica, folk medicines, herbal medicines, the pharmaceuticals and medications of the modern era, pharmaceutics, and the like. It shall encompass the discovery of medicaments, basic investigations about them, their characteristics and properties, their preparation and marketing, and their therapeutic applications.
While the committee will be monitoring relevant journals and books where such papers might appear, they welcome nominations of papers that would be eligible for consideration. The nomination should consist of a letter citing the work nominated along with a copy of the paper. For the current award, candidate papers will be those published in 2009 and 2010. Papers in languages other than English should be accompanied by a translation or detailed precis. Nominations should be directed to the J. Worth Estes Award Committee Chair, John Swann, The FDA History Office, Room 3322, White Oak Building 32, 10903 New Hampshire Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20993 (e-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)). Nominations must be received by 15 January 2011.
The award will be presented at the annual meeting of the AAHM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 28 April– 1 May 2011. As a result of a generous contribution in honor of Worth Estes from a member of the Association, the award will be accompanied by a $500 check.
American Association for the History of Medicine Award - Shryock Medal Essay Contest, 2011
Deadline: January 15 2011
http://www.histmed.org/awards.htm
Updated: July 15 2010
Graduate students in the United States and Canada are invited to enter the Shryock Medal Essay Contest. The medal honors Richard Harrison Shryock (1893–1972), a pioneer among historians interested in the history of medicine. The award is given for an outstanding, unpublished essay by a single author on any topic in the history of medicine. The essay (maximum 9,000 words, including endnotes) must be the result of original research or show an unusual appreciation and understanding of problems in the history of medicine. In particular, the committee will judge essays on the quality of writing, appropriate use of sources, and ability to address themes of historical significance.
The winner will be invited to attend the 2011 meeting of the Association, 28 April – 1 May, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the medal will be conferred. Reasonable travel expenses for the winner will be provided, as will a two-year complimentary membership in the AAHM. If the Shryock Medal Committee also selects an essay for honorable mention, its author will receive a certificate and a two-year complimentary membership in the AAHM.
This competition is open to students enrolled in a graduate program in any discipline, including medicine, in the United States or Canada at the time of submission. No student should submit an essay to both the Shryock Medal and Osler Medal competitions in the same year. Essays that have been awarded an Honorable Mention are not eligible for resubmission.
Complete contest information may be viewed on the AAHM Web site (www.histmed.org/Awards) or obtained from the Shryock Medal Committee Chair: Alexandra Stern, Ph.D., University of Michigan, Center for the History of Medicine, 100 Simpson Memorial Institute, 102 Observatory, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-0725 (e-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)). Essays must be postmarked or submitted electronically via e-mail (which is the preferred method of submission) no later than 15 January 2011.
Annals of Science Best Paper Contest
Deadline: September 30 2010
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pdf/competitions/tasc_2010.pdf
Updated: July 15 2010
Submissions are being accepted for the Annals of Science best paper prize 2010. This prize is now awarded annually to the author of an original, unpublished essay in the history of science or technology, which is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
The prize, which is supported by Taylor & Francis, is intended for those who are currently doctoral students, or have been awarded their doctorate within the past four years. Essays should be submitted to the Editor in a form acceptable for publication in Annals of Science (see the Journal’s webpage for a style guide, www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/tascauth.asp).
The winning essay will be published in the Journal, and the author will be awarded US$500 and a free subscription to Annals of Science! Papers should be submitted by 30th September 2010, with the winner being notified by 31st December 2010. The Editor’s decision is final.
American Association for the History of Medicine Award - Lifetime Achievement Award, 2011
http://www.histmed.org/awards.htm
Updated: July 15 2010
This award was established in 1988; the first recipients were Saul Jarcho, Lester King, and Owsei Temkin. The award is given annually to a member of the Association who has retired from regular institutional affiliation or practice, with a distinguished record of support of the history of medicine over many years, and who has made continuing scholarly contributions of a distinguished nature. The Lifetime Achievement Award Committee welcomes nominations for the award, which should include one or two paragraphs of explanation and support for the nomination. For complete application details and additional information about the Award, please see the AAHM Web site: http://www.histmed.org
Pressman–Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Development Award in 20th Century Hist Medicine or Science
Deadline: December 31 2010
http://www.histmed.org/awards.htm
Updated: July 15 2010
This award honors Jack D. Pressman, Ph.D., a distinguished historian of medicine and Associate Professor of the History of the Health Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco at the time of his early and unexpected death in June 1997. The award and stipend of $1,000 is given yearly for outstanding work in twentieth-century history of medicine or medical science, as demonstrated by the completion of the Ph.D. and a proposal to turn the dissertation into a publishable monograph.
The Ph.D. must have been completed and the degree granted within the last five years (i.e., 2006–2010). The application must include a curriculum vitae, the dissertation abstract, a one-page summary of the proposed book; a description (not exceeding two pages) of the work to be undertaken for publication; and two letters of support from faculty members knowledgeable about the applicant’s dissertation. Electronic copies of materials are preferred.
The Award will be presented at the 2011 meeting of the Association, to be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 28 April –1 May. The application, including all supporting materials, must be postmarked by December 31, 2010, and addressed to the Chair of the Pressman–Burroughs Wellcome Committee, Erika Dyck, Ph.D., Department of History, 9 Campus Drive, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A5, Canada (e-mail:erika.dyck@usask.edu) More information may be obtained from the AAHM Web site (www.histmed.org) or from the Committee Chair.
American Association for the History of Medicine Award - Osler Medal Essay Contest, 2011
Deadline: January 15 2011
http://www.histmed.org/awards.htm
Updated: July 15 2010
The William Osler Medal is awarded annually for the best unpublished essay on a medical historical topic written by a student enrolled in a school of medicine or osteopathy in the United States or Canada. First awarded in 1942, the medal commemorates Sir William Osler, who stimulated an interest in the humanities among medical students and physicians. The writer of the winning essay will be invited to attend the 2011 AAHM meeting, 28 April- 1 May, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the medal will be conferred. Reasonable travel expenses will be provided, as will a two-year complimentary membership in the AAHM. If the Osler Medal Committee also selects an essay for honorable mention, its author will receive a certificate and a two-year complimentary membership in the Association.
*All students who are candidates for the degree of Doctor of Medicine or Doctor of Osteopathy, or are graduates of the class of 2010, are eligible. The essay must have been written while the entrant was a student in good standing. Students are not eligible to compete for the Osler Medal if, by the closing date of the competition, they have completed at least one full year of graduate training in history, the history of science or medicine, or the humanities or social sciences. Medical students who have been enrolled in a graduate program in history or a related discipline should submit their essays to the Shryock competition. No student should submit an essay to both competitions in the same year. Essays that have been awarded an Honorable Mention are not eligible for resubmission.
*Essays may pertain to the historical development of a contemporary medical problem, or to a topic within the health sciences related to a discrete period of the past, and should demonstrate either original research or an unusual appreciation and understanding of the problems discussed. The essay (maximum 9,000 words, including endnotes) must be entirely the work of one contestant.
*Complete contest information may be viewed on the AAHM Web site (www.histmed.org/Awards) or obtained from the Osler Medal Committee chair: Joel D. Howell, M.D., Ph.D., Departments of History and Internal Medicine, University of Michigan. E-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Entries must be e-mailed to the chair no later than 15 January 2011.
Old STS listserv (sts@nic.surfnet.nl) now incorporated at Google groups (sts_1@googlegroups.com)
Updated: June 28 2010
The old STS list (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) is to be discontinued at the end of the 2010 calendar year, but the list has been incorporated at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) which is freely accessible to the STS community for further communication.
New Book from Janus Hansen: Public Engagement with Biotechnology in Europe
http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=389899
Updated: June 09 2010
Publisher description: “Ideas about public engagement with controversial technologies are growing in political prominence. This book delivers a theoretically grounded, empirical analysis of why active public involvement is considered to be of growing importance for the legitimate use of new technologies. It examines the different social dynamics influencing actual attempts to engage the public and the difficulties encountered. Janus Hansen argues that while there are strong normative reasons to further public engagement with the regulation of controversial technologies, there are also strong sociological reasons to reflect carefully on what such engagement can realistically achieve. This book delivers conceptual tools and empirical analyses to support such reflections based on in-depth case studies of important attempts to engage public concerns across Europe.”
US-specific site: http://us.macmillan.com/biotechnologyandpublicengagementineurope
Special section of Sociological Research Online on Epistemic Communities
http://www.socresonline.org.uk/15/2/
Updated: May 26 2010
Sociological Research Online has just published an international, peer-reviewed Special Section on the theme of Epistemic Communities.
Introduction: The Dynamics of Epistemic Communities, by Morgan Meyer and Susan Molyneux-Hodgson: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/15/2/14.html
From Comunities of Practice to Epistemic Communities: Health Mobilizations on the Internet, by Madeleine Akrich: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/15/2/10.html
Caring for Weak Ties - the Natural History Museum as a Place of Encounter Between Amateur and Professional Science, by Morgan: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/15/2/9.html
Epistemic Communities Facing a New Type of Agora? Centres of Science, Technology and Innovation as Defining the New Research Landscape in Finland, by Seppo Poutanen and Anne Kovalainen: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/15/2/12.html
Possibilities of Enacting and Researching Epistemic Communities, by Dagmar Lorenz-Meyer: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/15/2/13.html
Let's Get Organised: Practicing and Valuing Scientific Work Inside and Outside the Laboratory, by Lisa Garforth and Anne Kerr: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/15/2/11.html
New Book from Andrew Feenberg: Between Reason and Experience (MIT Press)
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12182
Updated: May 24 2010
Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity by Andrew Feenberg
The technologies, markets, and administrations of today's knowledge society are in crisis. We face recurring disasters in every domain: climate change, energy shortages, economic meltdown. The system is broken, despite everything the technocrats claim to know about science, technology, and economics. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that today powerful technologies have unforeseen effects that disrupt everyday life; the new masters of technology are not restrained by the lessons of experience, and accelerate change to the point where society is in constant turmoil. In Between Reason and Experience, leading philosopher of technology Andrew Feenberg makes a case for the interdependence of reason—scientific knowledge, technical rationality—and experience.
Feenberg examines different aspects of the tangled relationship between technology and society from the perspective of critical theory of technology, an approach he has pioneered over the past twenty years. Feenberg points to two examples of democratic interventions into technology: the Internet (in which user initiative has influenced design) and the environmental movement (in which science coordinates with protest and policy). He examines methodological applications of critical theory of technology to the case of the French Minitel computing network and to the relationship between national culture and technology in Japan. Finally, Feenberg considers the philosophies of technology of Heidegger, Habermas, Latour, and Marcuse. The gradual extension of democracy into the technical sphere, Feenberg argues, is one of the great political transformations of our time.
Special issue of BioSocieties on ‘Drugs, Addiction and Society,’ now available free online
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/biosoc/journal/v5/n1/index.html
Updated: April 26 2010
The first issue of BioSocieties published by Palgrave Macmillan consists of nine thought-provoking articles from leading experts in the field, arising from an interdisciplinary conference on 'Addiction, the Brain and Society' held in Atlanta in February 2009.
The issue is guest-edited by Deanne Dunbar and Howard I. Kushner of Emory University and Scott Vrecko from the University of Exeter. As well as providing important analyses of the key social and neurobiological issues raised by 'the problem of addiction', these papers show that dialogue between distinct and sometimes opposing positions from the social and cultural sciences and the neurosciences is difficult but possible.
Access to the whole of this issue is available for free at http://www.palgrave-journals.com/biosoc/journal/v5/n1/index.html
New Book: Science: The Art of Living
http://www.acumenpublishing.co.uk/display.asp?K=e2009012713293172
Updated: April 25 2010
By Steve Fuller, Acumen and McGill-Queens University Press, 2010.
In this book, Fuller contends that our continuing faith in science in the face of its actual history is best understood as the secular residue of a religiously inspired belief in divine providence. Our faith in science is the promise of a life as it shall be, as science will make it one day. Just as men once put their faith in God’s activity in the world, so we now travel to a land promised by science. Fuller suggests that the two destinations might be the same one.
Fuller sympathetically explores what it might mean to live “scientifically”. Can science give a sense of completeness to one’s life? Can it account for the entirety of what it is to be human? And what does our continuing belief in scientific progress say about us as a species?
Science, argues Fuller, is now undergoing its own version of secularization. We are ceasing to trust science in its institutional forms, formulated by an anointed class of science priests, and instead we are witnessing the emergence of what Fuller calls “Protscience” – all sorts of people, from the New Age movement to anti-evolutionists, claiming scientific authority as their own. Fuller shows that these groups are no more anti-scientific than Protestant sects were atheistic.
New Book: Health Promotion and Prevention Programmes in Practice
http://www.transcript-verlag.de/ts1302/ts1302s.php
Updated: April 15 2010
Health Promotion and Prevention Programmes in Practice: How Patients' Health Practices are Rationalised, Reconceptualised and Reorganised
Thomas Mathar, Yvonne J.F.M. Jansen (eds.)
The shift to prevention and health promotion is an example of how policy makers aim to rationalise and organise both health systems and patients' health practices. By applying a perspective from empirical science & technology studies (STS), based on qualitative research methods, the chapters of this book present a view behind the scenes and zoom into the micropolitics of prevention and health promotion. They analyse how patients are framed as being »at risk«, how preventative regimes shape medical practices, and what its practical consequences are in patients' everyday lives. This makes the insights of this book relevant for prevention and health promotion practitioners, public health policy-makers and researchers.
Tom Mathar is a PhD-student in the Research Cluster »Preventive Self« based at the Department of European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin.
Yvonne J.F.M. Jansen is cultural anthropologist and researcher at The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research TNO Quality of Life.
New Book: A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12080
Updated: March 31 2010
Paul N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010).
Global warming skeptics often fall back on the argument that the scientific case for global warming is all model predictions, nothing but simulation; they warn us that we need to wait for real data, "sound science." Paul Edwards' new book A Vast Machine argues that without models, there are no data. Today, no collection of signals or observations—even from satellites, which can "see" the whole planet with a single instrument—becomes global in time and space without passing through a series of data models. Everything we know about the world's climate we know through models. Edwards offers an engaging and innovative history of how scientists learned to understand the atmosphere—to measure it, trace its past, and model its future.
Edwards argues that all our knowledge about climate change comes from three kinds of computer models: simulation models of weather and climate; reanalysis models, which recreate climate history from historical weather data; and data models, used to combine and adjust measurements from many different sources. Meteorology creates knowledge through an infrastructure (weather stations and other data platforms) that covers the whole world, making global data. This infrastructure generates information so vast in quantity and so diverse in quality and form that it can be understood only by computer analysis—making data global. Edwards describes the science behind the scientific consensus on climate change, arguing that over the years data and models have converged to create a stable, reliable, and trustworthy basis for establishing the reality of global warming.
New Book: Surveillance in the Time of Insecurity (Rutgers University Press, 2010)
http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/acatalog/Surveillance_in_the_time_of_insecurity.html
Updated: March 15 2010
By Torin Monahan (Vanderbilt University).
Threats of terrorism, natural disaster, identity theft, job loss, illegal immigration, and even biblical apocalypse – all are perils that trigger alarm in people today. Although there may be a factual basis for many of these fears, they do not simply represent objective conditions. Feelings of insecurity are instilled by politicians and the media, and sustained by urban fortification, technological surveillance, and economic vulnerability.
Surveillance in the Time of Insecurity fuses advanced theoretical accounts of state power and neoliberalism with original research from the social settings in which insecurity dynamics play out in the new century. Torin Monahan explores the counterterrorism-themed show 24, Rapture fiction, traffic control centers, security conferences, public housing, and gated communities, and examines how each manifests complex relationships of inequality, insecurity, and surveillance. Alleviating insecurity requires that we confront its mythic dimensions, the politics inherent in new configurations of security provision, and the structural obstacles to achieving equality in societies.
AAAS Announces 5 New Members of the History and Philosophy of Science Section (L)
Updated: March 14 2010
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) honored five members of the History and Philosophy of Science Section (L) as Fellows at its 2010 annual meeting. The new Fellows are (1) Garland Allen, Washington University in St. Louis; (2) Daniel Dennett, Tufts University; (3) Maura Flannery, St. John’s University; (4) Anita Guerrini, Oregon State University; and (5) Manfred Laubichler, Arizona State University.
New Book: GM Food on Trial: Testing European Democracy
http://technology.open.ac.uk/cts/docs/GM%20Food%20on%20Trial%20flyer_A4.pdf
Updated: March 14 2010
By Les Levidow and Susan Carr, Routledge, 2010
Europe was told that it had no choice but to accept agbiotech, yet this imperative was turned into a test of democratic accountability for societal choices. Since the late 1990s, European public controversy has kept the agri-biotech industry and its promoters on the defensive. As some opponents and regulators alike have declared, ‘GM food/crops are on trial’. Suspicion of their guilt has been evoked by moral symbols – in disputes over whether genetically modified products are modest benign improvements on traditional plant breeding, or dangerous Frankenstein foods; and in disputes over whether they are global saviours, or control agents of multinational companies.
This book examines European institutions being put ‘on trial’ for how their regulatory procedures evaluate and regulate GM products. The defendant on trial was expanded − from product safety, to biotech companies, their innovation trajectory, regulatory decision-making, expert advisors, government policy and its democratic legitimacy − in ways which opened up alternative futures. Levidow and Carr highlight how public controversy led to national policy changes and demands, in turn stimulating changes in EU agbiotech regulations as a means to regain legitimacy.
Special issue of journal “Sign Language Studies” (SLS) on the science and technologies of deafness
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sign_language_studies/toc/sls.10.2.html
Updated: March 14 2010
This volume (10:2) connects the burgeoning academic field of science and technology studies (STS) with studies into the technologies of deafness; examples of such technologies include genomics, cochlear implantation, sign language corpora, educational tracking systems, and mobile communications. The subsequent articles all bear witness to the extensive interweaving of advanced technologies, scientific knowledge, deafness and sign language. The papers brought together in this special issue were presented at two prominent international conferences: the annual meeting called “Ways of Knowing” held by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), in Montreal from October 11–13, 2007; and the annual meeting called “Acting with Science, Technology and Medicine,” held jointly by 4S and the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) in Rotterdam from August 20–23, 2008.
The History and Philosophy of Science Section (L) of AAAS Announces Its 2010 Officers
Updated: March 14 2010
The 2010 officers of the History and Philosophy of Science Section (L) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) are:
Chair: Richard Creath
Chair-Elect: Jan Maienschein
Retiring Chair: Alan Rocke
Secretary: Jonathan Coopersmith
Members-at-Large: Heather Douglas, Paul Farber, Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, and Karen Rader.
MSc Medicine, Science & Society, King’s College London
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/interdisciplinary/cbas/msc/index.html
Updated: February 24 2010
What is the impact of President Obama’s policies on the global economy of embryonic stem cell research? What ethical and regulatory issues does the current boom of personal genome tests raise? Issues like these lie at the core of the MSc Medicine, Science & Society at the Centre for Biomedicine & Society (CBAS), King’s College London. This MSc explores new and important areas for Science and Technology Studies (STS) and the social sciences, ranging from stem cells to nanomedicine. It explores the implications of innovative biomedicine for identities, innovations, bioethics, regulation, science, medicine, and healthcare. The MSc is well suited to social science, science and humanities graduates. Full/part-time options are available: www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/interdisciplinary/cbas/msc/index.html
MSc information leaflet: www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/02/50/21/MScMedicineScienceSocietyFlyer.pdf
King's College London is a global leader in health science research, hosting more Medical Research Council (MRC) Research Centres (five) than any other University. The CBAS MSc and MA therefore examine the social science aspects and ethical dimensions of innovative biomedicine in a unique supporting context. The courses also allow students to expand a specialist interest by selecting from an impressive range of Masters Options. There are clear career trajectories and exciting PhD prospects for those graduating from these two Masters course. The life sciences are a major growth area within contemporary social science, and are key areas for research funding. For further information please see the CBAS website: www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/interdisciplinary/cbas/
MA Bioethics & Society, King’s College London (New for 2010)
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/interdisciplinary/cbas/mabas.html
Updated: February 24 2010
Developments in the biosciences raise important ethical issues that are increasingly being addressed by multidisciplinary research teams from the fields of philosophy and social science through, for example, the Wellcome Trust Strategic Award that created the London and Brighton Translational Ethics Centre (hosted at CBAS). This innovative MA in Bioethics & Society enables students to combine philosophical ethics modules taught by staff at the world famous Centre of Medical Law & Ethics (CMLE, School of Law) with social science and ethics modules from our CBAS MSc in Medicine, Science & Society. Students will be able to pursue their Dissertation with staff from CBAS and/or CMLE. Full/part-time options are available: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/interdisciplinary/cbas/mabas.html
King's College London is a global leader in health science research, hosting more Medical Research Council (MRC) Research Centres (five) than any other University. The CBAS MSc and MA therefore examine the social science aspects and ethical dimensions of innovative biomedicine in a unique supporting context. The courses also allow students to expand a specialist interest by selecting from an impressive range of Masters Options. There are clear career trajectories and exciting PhD prospects for those graduating from these two Masters course. The life sciences are a major growth area within contemporary social science, and are key areas for research funding. For further information please see the CBAS website: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/interdisciplinary/cbas/
New eBook: Hatched: New Zealand’s Future
http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/services/sustainablesoc/hatched/
Updated: February 15 2010
Hatched: The Capacity for Sustainable Development is a new eBook from Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research, New Zealand's foremost environmental research organisation.
Hatched is an eBook of research findings, stories and tools exploring five key areas of capacity required for New Zealand’s long-term success:
- Thinking and acting for long term success - can NZ be a future maker not a future taker?
- Businesses as sustainability innovators – improving and marketing businesses’ sustainability performance.
- Individuals as citizen consumers – what it takes to live sustainably.
- Facing up to wicked problems - creating solutions to complex, value laden and multi-party problems.
- The future as a set of choices - the next steps needed for NZ’s long-term success.
Hatched has been written for practitioners working within the public, business and community sectors and is free to download.
New Journals: Science as Culture, New Genetics and Society, and Engineering Studies
Updated: February 15 2010
Science as Culture (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/csac) , a 'critique of the way science is going', New Genetics and Society (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/cngs), a focus for leading-edge social science research on the new genetics and related biosciences, and Engineering Studies (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/test) , a new journal devoted to the scholarly study of engineers and engineering, these Routledge journals are available to individual 4S members at special annual print-only subscription rates. For more information, visit the 'News and Offers' page from the journal homepages or via the 4S members page.
The D. Kim Foundation for the History of Science and Technology in East Asia
Updated: January 14 2010
The D. Kim Foundation for the History of Science and Technology in East Asia is pleased to offer several annual fellowship awards and grants for 2010-2011. Established in 2008 the D. Kim Foundation is dedicated to furthering the study of the history of science and technology in East Asia since the start of the 20th century. Comparative studies of East Asia and the West as well as studies in related fields (mathematics, medicine and public health are also welcome). The Foundation provides fellowships and grants to encourage and support graduate students and young scholars in the field.
Dissertation Fellowship
Eligibility: PhD candidate who is writing his/her dissertation.
Amount of award: $25,000
Exchange Student Fellowship
Eligibility: Student who wishes to expand his/her scholarly experience by studying abroad.
Amount of award: $20,000 full-year, $10,000 half-year
Traveling/Research Grant
Eligibility: Must present a paper at an international conference, workshop or annual meeting, or do a short-term research project (less than a month).
Amount of award: Up to $2,500
Group Grant
Eligibility: Grants will be available to groups that organize workshops or international meetings. These meetings must be held in the United States and conducted in English.
Amount of award: Up to $5,000
For further information visit our website: www.dkimfoundation.org.
Masters (MSc) programme in Digital Anthropology at University College London
Deadline: June 30 2010
Updated: January 14 2010
Early application deadline: June 30, 2010
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/digital-anthropology/
The new MSc in Digital Anthropology--begun in the Autumn of 2009--is well positioned for becoming a world leader in the training of researchers in the social and cultural dimensions of information technologies and digital media.
Digital technologies have become ubiquitous. From Facebook, Youtube and Flickr to PowerPoint, Google Earth and Second Life. Museum displays migrate to the internet, family communication in the Diaspora is dominated by new media, artists work with digital films and images. Anthropology and ethnographic research is fundamental to understanding the local consequences of these innovations, and to create theories that help us acknowledge, understand and engage with them. Today's students need to become proficient with digital technologies as research and communication tools. Through combining technical skills with appreciation of social effects, students will be trained for further research and involvement in this emergent world.
This MSc (nominally one year of full-time study) brings together three key components in the study of digital culture:
1. Skills training in digital technologies, including our own Digital Lab, from internet and digital film editing to e-curation and digital ethnography.
2. Anthropological theories of virtualism, materiality/immateriality and digitisation.
3. Understanding the consequences of digital culture through the ethnographic study of its social and regional impact.
Bursaries
There is a £5,000 annual bursary shared between this programme and the MSc in Material and Visual Culture, as well as 3 x £1,000 bursaries for all anthropology MA/MSc programmes. See here for further details on funding opportunities.
The programme is suitable both for those with a prior degree in anthropology but also for those with degrees in neighbouring disciplines who wish to be trained in anthropological and related approaches to digital culture. There is scope for those with specialist interests to work closely with information system designers, curators, communication specialists as well as our own digital studio. In addition to its importance for careers such as media, design and museums, digital technology is also integral to development, theoretical and applied anthropology.
University College London is one of the highest rated universities in the world, coming fourth after Harvard, Cambridge, and Yale in the 2009 annual Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings.
The Dept. of Anthropology at UCL is the world's leading centre for the study of Material and Visual Culture. We publish The Journal of Material Culture and several relevant book series. We have nine specialist staff in material and visual culture, and currently supervise nearly fifty PhD students specifically in this field, including many with topics in Digital Anthropology.
For further information about this course contact Lane DeNicola(.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
For making an application, note that the UCL bureaucracy may take a while to catch up with what is a new course, so in order to ensure your application is received we recommend that you download the application form from:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-students/graduate-study/application-admission/downloadable-applications
And send this directly to:
Dr. Lane DeNicola
Department of Anthropology
University College London
14 Taviton Street
London WC1H OBW
New Book: Sciences from Below: Feminisms, Postcolonialities, and Modernities
Updated: January 14 2010
Sandra Harding
Duke University Press, 2008
A preeminent science studies scholar shows how feminist and postcolonial science studies challenge the problematic modernity versus tradition binary.
http://www.dukeupress.edu/books.php3?isbn=978-0-8223-4282-3
Mullins Award Winner—2009
Updated: January 14 2010
23 graduate student papers were nominated for this award. Many, many were truly excellent and we are confident that most will eventually be published. Still, our committee (including Andrew Lakoff, Daniel Kleinman, and Cathy Waldby) concluded that Manjari Mahajan’s paper, “Governing through the Non-Governmental: Shifting Terrains of Public Health in India’s AIDS Epidemic,” stood out. Mahajan explores the ways in which the Indian government, in a significant departure from its past public health practices, has relied heavily on non-governmental organizations to provide AIDS-related health services. In doing so, Mahajan argues a new mode of what she terms “contractual accountability” is developing. But Mahajan does much more than render a rich story, analyzing the political and epistemic implications of India’s approach to AIDS and showing the ways in which NGOs in India have become crucial players in knowledge production and expertise about AIDS, sexuality, culture and morality.
New Book: Schools under Surveillance: Cultures of Control in Public Education
Updated: January 14 2010
Rutgers University Press, 2010
Torin Monahan (Vanderbilt University) and Rodolfo D. Torres (UC Irvine), editors
Schools under Surveillance gathers together some of the very best researchers studying surveillance and discipline in contemporary public schools. Surveillance is not simply about monitoring or tracking individuals and their data--it is about the structuring of power relations through human, technical, or hybrid control mechanisms. Essays cover a broad range of topics including police and military recruiters on campus, testing and accountability regimes such as No Child Left Behind, and efforts by students and teachers to circumvent the most egregious forms of surveillance in public education. Each contributor is committed to the continued critique of the disparity and inequality in the use of surveillance to target and sort students along lines of race, class, and gender.
For more information, see the publisher's website at http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/acatalog/Schools_Under_Surveillance.html
New Graduate track at UMass Boston
Updated: January 14 2010
From personalized genomics to measurements of sea-level rise, from al Qaeda websites to citizen technology-assessment panels, from brain-based education to labor-saving inventions for use in developing countries, social and scientific changes are intertwined. "Science in a Changing World," a new graduate track at UMass Boston prepares students to participate in questioning and shaping the direction of scientific and social changes, as well as to teach and engage others to participate in this important endeavor.
Masters degree and Graduate certificate with face-to-face, online, and at-a-distance course offerings.
Students with diverse backgrounds and career paths--from laboratories to field research, journalism to policy formulation, teaching to activism--are welcome to join the track. The teachers, advisors, courses, and research & engagement projects will lead them to examine Science and its Social Context and to develop valuable professional skills in Research, Writing & Evaluation for Civic Engagement and in Collaborative processes & Problem-Based Teaching around real-world issues involving science and technology.
Applications accepted to start in spring and fall. For more information, see http://www.stv.umb.edu/SICW.html or contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
New Book: Experimental Secrets: International Security, Codes, and the Future of Research
Updated: January 14 2010
University Press of America, 2009
Brian Rappert (University of Exeter)
Experimental Secrets addresses an unsettling question asked in recent years about the implications of modern biotechnology: might the knowledge being gained be used to further—rather than prevent—the spread of disease? In other words, might the life sciences become the death sciences? To avert this prospect, many governments, science agencies, and others have proposed researchers should subscribe to codes of conduct. Experimental Secrets recounts five years of international efforts to devise such codes. These initiatives have raised a question of profound significance: Are there limits to what should be known or communicated in the name of security?
To convey the experiences of policy-making, Experimental Secrets offers a marked departure from typical forms of academic writing. It seeks to convey a sense of what has been at stake with codes through ways of writing that question the conventions of statecraft, science, and social research. Different styles of writing, formats of texts, and points of views are mixed in an effort to convey the tensions, frustrations, and promises associated with international diplomatic efforts. In doing so, this book examines how those in STS and elsewhere undertaking research in conditions of secrecy could use what is missing from their accounts as a creative resource.
For more information, see the publisher's website at http://www.univpress.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=%5EDB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0761844759
IEEE History Center Life Member Internship
Deadline: March 01 2010
Updated: January 14 2010
Scholars at the beginning of their career studying the history of electrical technology and computing are invited to contact the Center to be considered for a paid Internship at the Center's offices on the Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
The intern program seeks to provide research experience for graduate students in the history of electrical and computer technologies, while enlisting the help of promising young scholars for the Center's projects. The Intern generally works full-time for two months at the History Center on a Center project that is connected to his or her own area of interest. This time is usually during the summer, but other arrangements will be considered. Interns are also encouraged to consult with the Center's staff and its associates, and guided to research resources in the area. The internship is designed for those near the beginning or middle of their graduate careers, but advanced undergraduates, advanced graduates, and, on rare occasions, recent Ph.D.s will also be considered. Special consideration is often given to scholars from outside the United States who might not otherwise have an opportunity to visit historical resources in this country.
The stipend paid to the intern is US$3,500, but additional funds may be available to defray travel costs, depending on the intern’s circumstances. This internship is supported by the IEEE Life Members Committee.
There is no formal application form. To apply, please mail a curriculum vitae showing your studies in electrical history along with a cover letter describing the sort of project you would be interested in doing (see contact information below). The deadline for contacting the IEEE History Center is 1 March 2010.
IEEE and Rutgers are AA/EO employers. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply for all positions. The IEEE History Center is cosponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)—the world’s largest professional technical society—, and Rutgers—the State University of New Jersey. The mission of the Center is to preserve, research, and promote the legacy of electrical engineering and computing. The Center can be contacted at: IEEE History Center, Rutgers University, 39 Union Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8538, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/history_center/index.html
New Book: Protocol Politics: The Globalization of Internet Governance
Updated: January 14 2010
The MIT Press, 2009
Information Revolution and Global Politics Series
Dr. Laura DeNardis, Yale Law School
ISBN-10: 0-262-04257-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-262-04257-4
“The Internet is approaching a critical point. The world is running out of Internet addresses.” So begins Protocol Politics, a new book by STS Scholar Laura DeNardis, a Research Scholar and Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and the Executive Director of the Yale Information Society Project. Internet engineers developed a new technical protocol, IPv6, to address this problem but IPv6 adoption has barely begun because of technical, cultural, and economic constraints. DeNardis's key insight is that technical standards are political. IPv6 serves as a case study for how protocols more generally are intertwined with socioeconomic and political order. IPv6 intersects with provocative topics including Internet civil liberties, U.S. military objectives, globalization, institutional power struggles, and the promise of global democratic freedoms. DeNardis offers recommendations for Internet standards governance, based not only on technical concerns but on principles of openness and transparency, and examines the global implications of looming Internet address scarcity versus the slow deployment of the new protocol designed to solve this problem.
MIT Press Book Description http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11893'
2010 ESST European Award for Aspiring Undergraduates in Science, Technology and Society (STS)
Deadline: June 30 2010
Updated: January 14 2010
Undergraduates studying at any European university and in any relevant field (engineering, the sciences, the social sciences and the humanities) are invited to apply for the 2010 ESST European Award sponsored by the European Masters Programme in Society, Science and Technology (ESST). An amount of 1,000 € will be awarded for the best original undergraduate paper or essay on any topic related to Society, Science and Technology. All submissions must be between 2,000 and 3,000 words in length and must be written in English. The deadline is 30 June, 2010.
For more information about the ESST European Masters Programme see:
http://www.esst.eu
Further details about the 2010 ESST European Award are available from:
http://www.esst.eu/award
Bakken Travel Grants
Deadline: February 19 2010
Updated: January 14 2010
Scholars and artists are invited to apply for travel fellowships and grants, which the Bakken Library and Museum in Minneapolis offers to encourage research in its collection of books, journals, manuscripts, prints, and instruments. The awards are to be used to help defray the expenses of travel, subsistence, and other direct costs of conducting research at the Bakken for researchers who must travel some distance and pay for temporary housing in the Twin Cities in order to conduct research at the Bakken.
Visiting Research Fellowships are awarded up to a maximum of $1,500; the minimum period of residence is two weeks, and preference is given to researchers who are interested in collaborating informally for a day or two with Bakken staff during their research visit. Research Travel Grants are awarded up to a maximum of $500 (domestic) and $750 (foreign); the minimum period of residence is one week.
The next application deadline for either type of research assistance is 19 February 2010.
For more details and application guidelines, please contact:
Elizabeth Ihrig, Librarian
The Bakken Library and Museum
3537 Zenith Avenue So.
Minneapolis, MN., 55416
e-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
http://www.thebakken.org
New Book: The Making of a Building: A Pragmatist Approach to Architecture
Updated: January 14 2010
Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, 2009. XII, 227 pp., 24 ill.
ISBN 978-3-03911-952-3 pb.
Order online: http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?vID=11952&vLang=E&vHR=1&vUR=2&vUUR=1
How do architects learn about a building-to-be? How does a building emerge and gain reality in the model shop, in scaling, in option making, in architects' - and engineers' - discussions, in public presentations? What does it mean to design? What does it mean to add a building to the city? Drawing on rare ethnographical material of architects at work at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) of Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam in the period 2001-4, this book offers a novel account of the social and cognitive complexity of architecture in the making.
The author dismisses both stylistic periodization and socio-political constructivist methods as being inadequate to the task of understanding the dynamic process of how architects generate design through space and materiality, instead showcasing the potentials of the pragmatist approach as a research tool in the field of architecture. Offering a new way of understanding architecture as practice that takes place within the interactive networks of human and non-human actors, the book also tells the intriguing story of the extensions of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Contents: Pragmatist Approach to Architecture - The Social Life of Buildings - Ethnography of Design - Visualisation in Design - Scale Models - Design Cognition - Comparative Historical Enquiry in Design - Architecture of Addition - New York - Manhattan - Design Controversies - American Architecture - Marcel Breuer - Michael Graves - Rem Koolhaas - Actor-Network Theory.
The Author: Albena Yaneva is a Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. In her research she draws extensively on the Actor-Network Theory to explore fieldworks in architecture, industrial design, contemporary art, and museum studies.
New Book: The Sociology of Intellectual Life: The Life of the Mind in and Around the Academy
Updated: January 14 2010
By Steve Fuller, 'Theory, Culture and Society' series, Sage Publications (London)
This book outlines a social theory of knowledge for the 21st century. It deals directly with a world in which it is no longer taken for granted that universities and academics are the places and people that best embody the life of the mind. While Fuller defends academic privilege, he takes very seriously the historic divergences between academics and intellectuals, attending especially to the different features of knowledge production that they value. Among this book's features include:
* an account of the vexed relationship between postmodernism and the university as an institution;
* the role tensions endemic to an academic who wishes also to function as an intellectual;
* a critical survey of the emerging fields of social epistemology and the sociology of philosophy, set against the rise of Anglophone analytic philosophy in the 20th century;
* a discussion of the ethics and politics of public intellectual life, especially given its largely improvisational character.
Save 50% order online at http://www.uk.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book229759&
quoting promo code UK09AF024. E-book also available at £24.95 (ISBN 978-1-84920-523-8). The website also includes a link to the author's podcasts about the book, as well as the text of the introduction and chapter one. The author is also happy to be contacted about the book at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
William Kinsella is Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Science, Technology, and Society at
Updated: January 14 2010
William Kinsella has been appointed to a three-year term as Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Science, Technology, and Society at North Carolina State University (http://ids.chass.ncsu.edu/sts/). He has also received a U.S. Fulbright scholar award for research to be based at the University of Stuttgart during the Spring 2010 term. His Fulbright research project is titled "Nuclear Energy in Germany: Institutional, Political, and Public Communication in a Changing Social Context."
Research Grants from the Friends of the UW Madison Libraries
Deadline: February 01 2010
Updated: January 14 2010
The Friends of the University of Wisconsin—Madison Libraries is pleased to offer a minimum of four grants-in-aid annually, each one month in duration, for research in the humanities in any field appropriate to the library’s collections. The purpose is to foster the high-level use of the University of Wisconsin—Madison Libraries’ rich holdings, and to make them better known and more accessible to a wider circle of scholars. Awards are $2,000 each, or $3,000 for those traveling from outside North America.
Memorial Library, the university’s principal research library is distinguished in almost every area of scholarship. It boasts world-renowned collections of:
•history of science from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment
•pseudo science and medical and scientific quackery
•the largest American collection of avant-garde “Little Magazines”
•a rapidly growing collection of American women writers to 1920
•many other fields
Generally, applicants must have a Ph.D. or be able to demonstrate a record of solid intellectual accomplishment. Scholars and graduate students who have completed all requirements except the dissertation are also eligible.
The grants-in-aid are designed primarily to help provide access to UW—Madison library resources for people who live beyond commuting distance. Preference will be given to scholars who reside outside a 75-mile radius of Madison. The grantee is expected to be in residence during the term of the award, which may be taken up at any time during the year.
Applications are due 1 February of any year. For application forms or more information, see http://giving.library.wisc.edu/friends/grant-in-aid.shtml, or write to Friends of the University of Wisconsin—Madison Libraries, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 990 Memorial Library, 728 State St., Madison, WI 53706, or contact the Friends at 608-265-2505; fax: 608-265-2754, E-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Further Information:
http://giving.library.wisc.edu/friends/grant-in-aid.shtml
The History of Science Society 2009 Prize Winners
Updated: January 14 2010
The History of Science Society awarded its 2009 prizes at the HSS annual conference, which was in Phoenix. The HSS wishes to congratulate its prize winners.
Sarton Medal: (for lifetime achievement)
John E. Murdoch
Professor, Harvard University
Pfizer Award: (for the best scholarly book)
Harold J. Cook
Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine and professor at University College London
Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (Yale University Press, 2007)
Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize: (for the best book for a general audience)
Charles Seife
Associate Professor, The Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University
Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking (Viking Adult, 2008)
Derek Price/Rod Webster Prize: (for the best article in Isis)
Angela N. H. Creager, Professor, Princeton University and Gregory J. Morgan, Associate Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology “After the Double Helix: Rosalind Franklin's Research on Tobacco mosaic virus" (Isis, 2008, 99:239-272)
Joseph H Hazen Education Prize: (for excellence in teaching the history of science)
Frederick Gregory
Professor, University of Florida
Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize: (for the best book on the history of women in science)
Monica H. Green
Professor, Arizona State University
Making Women's Medicine Masculine. The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern
Gynaecology (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Nathan Reingold Prize: (for the best unpublished article by a graduate student)
Rachel N. Mason Dentinger, University of Minnesota
“Molecularizing Plant Compounds, Evolutionizing Insect-Plant Relationships: Gottfried S. Fraenkel and the physiological study of insect feeding in the 1950s."
New Book: The Materiality of Learning Technology and Knowledge in Educational Practice
Updated: January 14 2010
Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Estrid Sørensen, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
The field of educational research lacks a methodology for the study of learning that does not begin with humans, their aims, and their interests. The Materiality of Learning seeks develop a novel spatial approach to educational research that focusses on the materiality of learning. Drawing on science and technology studies (STS), and especially on the spatial thinking of After-ANT, Estrid Sørensen compares an Internet-based 3D virtual environment project in a fourth-grade class with the class’s work with traditional learning materials, including blackboards, textbooks, notebooks, pencils, and rulers. Taking into account pupils’ and teachers’ physical bodies, Professor Sørensen analyzes the multiple forms of technology, knowledge, and presence that are enacted with the materials. This book is an important reference for professionals and graduate or postgraduate students interested in a variety of fields, including educational studies, educational psychology, social anthropology, and STS.
• Original ethnographic descriptions showing the fine details of how materials influence the learning process • Introduces the advanced and complex Actor-Network Theory to the educational field, clarified for the reader through detailed ethnographic descriptions
‘Sørensen shows in the book that it is indeed possible to write a genuine and theoretically sophisticated post-humanist analysis, while showing care and empathy for the people invovled.’ Prof. Torben Elgaard Jensen, Technical University of Denmark
New book: The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies by Myra J. Hird
Updated: January 14 2010
This ambitious, agenda-setting study considers the origins of sociable life from a microontological perspective. More specifically, it suggests ways of engaging with bacteria in other-than passive or pathogenic characterizations. We know much more about living organisms "big-like-us" than we do about those organisms which originated life on Earth and sustain the biosphere through complex symbiotic and recycling relationships. This book details scientific research on bacterial capabilities such as perception, communication, community organization and symbiosis. It critically analyzes evolutionary theories about the development of species (including neo-Darwinism, epigenetics and symbiogenesis). It also draws on bio-philosophical discussions of sexual difference, identity, environmentalism and ethics, providing a transdisciplinary framework with which to engage the social and natural sciences together to recognize bacterial liveliness in structuring social relations.
Praise for The Origins of Sociable Life: ‘Myra J. Hird provides a highly engaging and energetic account of contemporary scientific debates about microbes, detailing how they challenge mainstream understandings of evolution, identity, sex and ecology. Most importantly, she articulates why social scientists, feminists and queer theorists should pay careful attention to our inextricable entanglements with the microcosmos. Her enthusiasm for her subject matter is infectious.’ — Celia Roberts, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, UK
‘This book is an exciting and inviting account of the messy entanglements and inventions of the world’s tiny beings, those entities that shape scale upon scale of sociable living for all on the earth. Myra Hird’s book is richly researched and beautifully written, and it fulfills my appetite for an account of biology and biologists to live with and for. Hird shows how “thinking with micro-organisms”– and with their scientists – can be a fundamental practice for living well in multispecies, mortal worlds.’— Donna Haraway, Distinguished Professor, History of Consciousness Department, UC Santa Cruz, USA
For more information, see the publisher's website, http://us.macmillan.com/theoriginsofsociablelifeevolutionaftersciencestudie
New Book from Cary Wolfe: What Is Humanism? (U of Minn Press, 2009)
Updated: January 08 2010
WHAT IS POSTHUMANISM?
By Cary Wolfe
University of Minnesota Press | 392 pages | 2009
ISBN 978-0-8166-6614-0| hardcover | $75.00
ISBN 978-0-8166-6615-7| paperback | $24.95
Posthumanities Series, Vol. 8
Can a new kind of humanities-posthumanities-respond to the redefinition of humanity's place in the world by both the technological and the biological or "green" continuum in which the "human" is but one life form among many? Exploring this radical repositioning, Cary Wolfe ranges across bioethics, cognitive science, animal ethics, gender, and disability to develop a theoretical and philosophical approach responsive to our changing understanding of ourselves and our world.
Cary Wolfe holds the Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Chair in English at Rice University. His previous books include Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and the Pragmatics of the "Outside," Observing Complexity: Systems Theory and Postmodernity, and Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, all published by the University of Minnesota Press.
For more information, including the table of contents, visit the book's webpage:
http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/W/wolfe_posthumanism.html
For more information on the Posthumanities Series:
http://www.upress.umn.edu/byseries/posthumanities.html
Sign up to receive news on the latest releases from University of Minnesota Press:
http://www.upress.umn.edu/mediaalert.html
New Program in Science, Technology, and International Development at U of Edinburgh
Updated: January 08 2010
The Science, Technology and Innovation Studies Subject Group at the University of Edinburgh is launching a new postgraduate programme in Science, Technology and International Development from September 2010. The MSc programme (coursework plus dissertation) can be completed full-time over one year or part-time over two or three years. Alternatively a shorter programme (coursework without dissertation) can be followed for a Diploma or Certificate. The MSc Science, Technology and International Development is designed to equip students with an advanced interdisciplinary understanding of the historical, sociological, political and policy aspects of science and technology as they relate to international development. The programme provides a conceptual and policy-oriented approach the relationships between science, technology and international development. The programme prepares students for specialised practical work in international development or further academic study. Further information: see http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/stid or contact the Programme Director Lawrence Dritsas .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
Arthur L. Norberg Travel Fund
Deadline: January 15 2010
Updated: January 02 2010
The Arthur L. Norberg Travel Fund provides short-term grants-in-aid to help scholars with travel expenses to use archival collections at the Charles Babbage Institute. Each year we plan to award two $750 grants.
Applicants should send a 2-page CV as well as a 500-word project description that describes the overall research project, identifies the importance of specific CBI collections, and discusses the projected outcome (journal article, book chapter, museum exhibit, etc.). Applicants are strongly encouraged to examine the extensive on-line finding guides to CBI’s 200-plus archival collections at http://www.cbi.umn.edu/collections/archmss.html. Applicants should estimate how many days they plan to use CBI collections during their visit (travel should generally be in the calendar year of the award). To be eligible, scholars will reside outside the Twin Cities metropolitan region.
Notification of awards will be made within four weeks, and travel can commence directly thereafter. Questions pertaining to collection content and access can be directed to R. Arvid Nelsen, CBI Archivist, at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Please direct questions about the Arthur Norberg Travel Fund to Jeffrey Yost, CBI Associate Director, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). For additional information, see http://www.cbi.umn.edu.
Materials must be submitted by email to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or postmarked no later than 15 January 2010.
Further Information: http://www.cbi.umn.edu/collections/archmss.html