March 13, 2022 | Reflections
Editor’s note: This is the first part in a two part post of tributes compiled by friends and students of Prof. Trevor Pinch.
Words are not enough, and yet words are all we have. If there is one feeling that we would like to leave you with as you read this post, it is our deep love and appreciation for Trevor Pinch who passed away on December 16, 2021. His enthusiasm for life and dedication to his craft never faded even as he lived with cancer for more than four years. He is no longer with us, but he is alive in our memories. Below you will find a trail of memories written by his graduate students (arranged alphabetically) who had the honor of working with him over his long illustrious career as an STS scholar. Right from being a teacher, a guide, a critic, and a friend, he has played many roles in our lives as students, as researchers, as writers, and as friends. We miss him.
Trevor with Enongo (Courtesy: Enongo A. Lumumba-Kasongo)
I was always amazed at how Trevor was laid-back, fun, and happy. He was the complete opposite of the picture I had in my mind of what a famous academic professor would be. He would always come to the student presentations and would always give helpful advice. His classes were super interesting! He would tell stories about all the research he had done, people he had met, places he had been to. Listening to Trevor was like traveling through the history of our discipline. You could tell that he loved to live, he loved everything he did. We know that he lived his life to the fullest and hopefully this thought will comfort us all.
– Amanda Domingues, PhD Candidate, Cornell University
Trevor Pinch is a model for every scholar, and I greatly admire his contribution to many fields, e.g., STS, sound studies, and design. I was in the middle of my Ph.D. in Design at Cornell when I came across this Professor in STS called Trevor Pinch. At that time, I did not know him or STS, nor knew that that Professor would profoundly impact my career. I became his student, advisee, and also a friend. Today, as an Assistant Professor in Design and Informatics at the UIUC, my research resonates with the knowledge Trevor shared in numerous conversations we had. Dear friend, I am forever in your debt.
– Carlos Aguiar, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Since I learned of Trevor’s passing I have been filled with a deep sense of gratitude. He shaped the course of my life in such a profound way that I can’t imagine the direction it would have taken had I not worked with him. Beyond his fun and engaging teaching style, his work on Robert Moog’s synthesizer gave me a glimmer of hope that I might be able to engage with the study of music in my own work, as someone who’d developed a deep passion for making computer music in high school but had never found the confidence to consider herself a proper musician. The idea that I could study music and sound through the lens of STS felt like a lifeline, and it proved to be just that. With Trevor’s encouragement and through witnessing his own creative journey as a musician, I developed the courage to not just maintain my artistic practice, but to lean into it as a valuable frame for exploring my academic work. I completed my dissertation on community-based recording studios in 2019, and I’m starting next year as an assistant professor in the music department at Brown University, teaching classes on rap songwriting and feminist sound studies. I hope I can someday do for my students what Trevor did for me.
– Enongo A. Lumumba-Kasongo, Postdoctoral Fellow, Brown University
I remember meeting him for the first time on my campus visit to Cornell, when I was still applying. It was winter and he was wearing a long scarf, so I also thought he looked just like Doctor Who (specifically the fourth Doctor Tom Baker)! When it came time to choose a chair for my committee, Trevor was a clear choice. When I asked him, he not only agreed but said he would be honored to be my chair! That was a great example of how Trevor made me and everyone he worked with feel valued and encouraged. He was also very generous, giving me books off of his shelf, including a copy of his book Analog Days, which he signed for me. Oddly enough, our final correspondence was an email in July of 2021, in which we discussed Delia Derbyshire, the electronic music pioneer who created the iconic Doctor Who theme at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and he mentioned he was one of “those kids scared shitless by Dr Who in 1963”, who would watch it every Saturday afternoon at the home of one of his friends whose family had a TV, as his household didn’t have one at the time. Funny how things come full circle. Working with Trevor was one of the great honors and privileges of my life, and I am so glad to have known him and been a small part of his.
– Hansen Hsu, Curator at the Computer History Museum
Trevor Pinch hooked me on science studies! I read The Golem in my intro HPS course in college, which changed how I thought about neutrinos as well as my possible career. When I came to Cornell I was surprised to find a scholar of his caliber to be so congenial, down to Earth, full of advice and care for every single student who walked in his door, and enthusiastic about his craft. His intellectual influence on me was enormous: he encouraged me to pursue the London Underground project, trained me in laboratory ethnography, was wildly enthusiastic about my research with the Mars Rovers, taught me invaluable lessons about leadership, and was a mentor to me far beyond my graduation. Along the way were too many fun and musical memories to recount, like playing duets (usually Bob Dylan) at department gatherings, the time he showed up as Ozzy Osbourne to a grad student costume party, more than one raucous evening of karaoke (there was an unforgettable version of “Material Girl” at 4S in Tokyo), and recently visiting him with my young family whom he taught to play his impressive collection of “synthis.” And it was only when I attended a NASA meeting featuring his exact double, Brian May from the band Queen, that I finally realized Trevor had missed his calling as a rock star! But most enduring for me was his attitude toward academic life. His door was always open, he gave unfailing and excellent advice, and his thoughtful kind of scholarly questioning always opened up new avenues, left you thinking in exciting directions and feeling encouraged in the process. He always told students just how much he was learning from us, whether it was teaching him PowerPoint, working on a joint class paper, or theorizing with the young scholars in digitalSTS. I return to his writing often in my teaching and research, and in that way I’m glad he’ll always be with us. But when I think of his legacy, it’ll be the way he modeled being a scholar: warm and open, irrepressibly intellectually curious, unapologetically exuberant, supportive of juniors, committed to the field and its future – and enjoying the journey.
– Janet Vertesi, Associate Professor, Princeton University
From day one of my Cornell years, Trevor was caring, sincere, supportive, just as he did for so many people around him, whether they were colleagues, students, or just their families and friends. During our numerous meetings for my independent study, A-exam preparation, TA business, and dissertation writing, he helped me at almost every stage of my long doctoral journey with an incredibly encouraging attitude all the time. He answered my questions whenever I had them, and he constantly shared valuable advice, experiences, and wisdom about academia and life.
Thinking of Trevor, he was an exceptional scholar and mentor. His study was creative and driven by earnest inquiries. Importantly, he always put humans first but not things, rules, or what they “should” be. Trevor truly had high wisdom about life and was a strong practitioner of this wisdom, which he also used to help many people filter out the noises of their lives. In his last long email to me in January 2021, he still tried to help me sort out of my long struggle with using the term of field knowledge or not by saying: “The answer is that they have a unique form of knowledge or expertise – field knowledge! It’s actually very simple! I buy it anyway!”
I have so many thanks that I wish I could still say to him! What has been kindly and graciously done leaves marks. They will never be forgotten. Trevor, what you helped, advised, and supported will stay in my heart with my forever gratitude.
– Ling-Fei Lin, PhD Cornell University 2015
When Trevor told me with enthusiasm one day in his methods course that investigating the growing popularity of ASMR (Autonomous sensory meridian response) videos would make a great STS project, I knew I was in the right disciplinary home. He was great at that–making us feel at home wherever he was. To Trevor!
– Lissette Lorenz, PhD candidate, Cornell University
Trevor would joke about how Americans love to brag about working hard while the British tendency is to downplay how much one works. That helps explain the way he made things look so easy. Multiple people I’ve talked to since he passed have observed that he was one of the most joyful people, let alone academics, they’d ever met. You got the sense that he followed his interests wherever they led. As an undergrad during the high uncertainty of the 2008 financial crisis, I remember reading his 1981 paper on the construction of certainty among solar neutrino scientists and thinking “this is what I want to do.” Realizing that we shared a love of sound and synthesizers was equally mind blowing. Playing music with him was always fun, and I’ve never seen anyone so excited about the harmonics of a fixed filter bank. I could scarcely have asked for a better advisor.
– Owen Marshall, Postdoctoral Fellow, Cornell University
I’ll never forget the first time we met as his advisee. I was invited for brunch at his house and as a proper porteño I showed up very dressed up… only to be greeted by the world-renowned scholar wearing an orange t-shirt with a hole in it and two different socks! I remember thinking that he didn’t seem to take himself too seriously and I really liked that.
We met regularly for supervision, usually at places I couldn’t regularly afford as a graduate student, and he never let me pay. He said that if I wanted to return the favor I should do the same with my students once I became a professor. As my students would tell you, I never let them pay and every time I am able to do this it reminds me of Trevor.
As the years went by and my career developed, the relationship shifted from mentor-mentee into friendship. Recently, I spent a weekend with him in Ithaca. We had long conversations; watched a Norwich game; shopped together; and had dinner in his new favorite local restaurant. He brewed a cup of tea for me. We planned to see each other again at Ron Kline’s retirement party next spring, and exchanged a gentle, parting hug.
Rest in peace, my friend. You’ll be sorely missed, but your legacy of wisdom, compassion, and joie de vivre will live forever among those of us who had the privilege to have known you.
– Pablo J. Boczkowski, Professor, Northwestern University
(To be concluded)
Published: 03/13/2022