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2023-24 Colloquium Series

The Science Studies Colloquium Series takes place on Mondays from 12:15pm-1:45pm in the Arts and Humanities Building, 6th Floor, Room 624 or by zoom.

To be added to our colloquium email list please email ssadmin@ucsd.edu.

Fall Quarter 2023

October 2, 2023

Science Studies Program Meeting
SSP faculty and students only 

October 9, 2023 (Zoom Lecture)

Marisa Brandt
Academic Specialist
Lyman Briggs College
&
Emily York
Associate Professor, ISAT
James Madison University

Critical STS Pedagogy as Collaborative Infrastructures: Our journeys from SSP to STEM Teaching & Learning Research 

As scholars trained in both Communication and Science Studies at UCSD, the authors both saw STS as a framework for studying and critiquing technoscientific communities from the outside. When we became professors, we each found that being critical “outsiders” was no longer viable: in our teaching and in our institutions, we had opportunities and responsibilities to work with STEM students and colleagues. In this talk, we chart our parallel, and sometimes intersecting, journeys from critical STS observers of other technoscientific worlds, to teacher-scholars who reflexively work to bring STS both into our classrooms and our broader institutions in the hopes of forging new collaborative infrastructures for technoscientific education. This has also allowed us to participate in assembling an international academic community of critical STS educators. In the first half of the talk, we discuss how we each came to see and use STS as a critical pedagogy for STEM education praxis. In the second half, we describe how we came to extend this work institutionally through an ongoing research project with partners across four institutions. Through this work, we have come to understand the potential for critical STS pedagogies as infrastructures for collaborative research, as evidenced in the STS as a Critical Pedagogy Workshop (NSF #1921545) and the Collaborative Research and Education Architecture for Transformative Engagement With STS (CREATE/STS, NSF #2121207). We also invite you to join us on October 16 for “Bringing Critical STS Approaches Into Undergraduate STEM Education: A Workshop.”

 

October 16, 2023 (Zoom Workshop)

Marisa Brandt
Academic Specialist
Lyman Briggs College
&
Emily York
Associate Professor, ISAT
James Madison University

Bringing Critical STS Approaches into Undergraduate STEM Education: A Workshop

In Part II of our SSP Colloquium on “Critical STS Pedagogy as Collaborative Infrastructures” (October 9) we bring theory into action in an interactive pedagogy workshop. Grounded in our own teaching experiences and collaborative research, we highlight educational practices that can inspire and motivate undergraduate STEM students toward critical STS sensibilities, and that cultivate their capacities to be sociotechnical thinkers and interdisciplinary collaborators in their majors, internships, and jobs. In this hands-on workshop, we will demonstrate several techniques and approaches for enacting critical STS pedagogies in the undergraduate STEM classroom, including an interactive demonstration of the “Creative Anticipatory Ethical Reasoning” (CAER) framework developed in the STS Futures Lab. The CAER framework is also a central component of the CREATE/STS research project described in the October 9 SSP Colloquium. Note: The two talks can stand alone, though we encourage participants to attend both sessions for a more complete picture of the project. 

October 24, 2023

Student Choice Speaker: Gabrielle Hecht
Professor of History and (by courtesy) Anthropology
Stanford University

Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures

Residual Governance dives into the wastes of gold and uranium mining in South Africa to explore how communities, experts, and artists fight for infrastructural and environmental justice. Mining in South Africa is a prime example of what Hecht theorizes as residual governance—the governance of waste and discard, governance that is purposefully inefficient, and governance that treats people and places as waste and wastelands. Ultimately, Hecht argues, the history of mining in South Africa and the resistance to residual governance and environmental degradation is a planetary story: the underlying logic of residual governance lies at the heart of contemporary global racial capitalism and is a major accelerant of the Anthropocene

Bio: Gabrielle Hecht is Professor of History and (by courtesy) Anthropology at Stanford University. Her previous award-winning books include Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade and The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II.

 

 

   

October 30, 2023 (Zoom Lecture)

Aspen K.B.Omapang
Information Science PhD student
Cornell University 

A Walk Down Dole Avenue: Disruption, Resistance, and Relations From Within the Academe

Often the neo-liberal academy institutionalizes a settler-colonial logic of extractivism unto researchers. For example, instead of using our position to transfer power, resources, and access to communities, academics instead appropriate knowledge to gain high-status among peers. Black feminisms and decolonial scholar-activists have prompted us to do more than think and instead challenge Imperialism and Western thought. Using our academic identities and affiliations as conduits for resource redistribution, this talk explores modes in which folks have wrecked, scavenged, retooled, and reassembled the settler-colonial university into anti-colonial contraptions.

During this talk, I will begin by outlining a few theoretical and methodological approaches to disruptive and resistive praxis. Next, I will contextualize the position of “academic” against the history of academic land dispossession and current settler colonial acts of the academe. Lastly, I will turn to the ongoing resistance to academic conferences as a practical case study of these practices. 

Aspen will be joined by discussant Keolu Fox Ph.D., Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian), Anthropology, UC San Diego

  

November 6, 2023 

Coffee and Cookies: Drop-In Hour with SSP Faculty

SSP Grads only

 

November 13, 2023 (Zoom Lecture)

Anna Bonnell Freidin
Assistant Professor of History
University of Michigan

Childbirth and Communities of Care in Ancient Rome

How did Romans mitigate the risks of childbirth? This talk will explore the communities marshaled to protect birthing people and their offspring. Amulets—whether made of stone, plants, or something else—will be our primary focus, as they reveal a networked approach to uncertainty by drawing together human and nonhuman agencies.

 

November 20, 2023

Palashi Vaghela, Phd
UCSD President’s Postdoctoral Fellow  

Department of Communication 

Hidden in Plain Sight: Decoding Inscriptions of Caste and Gender in Computing

Recent caste discrimination lawsuits in Silicon Valley have renewed global interest in the phenomenon of caste, this time in the computing industry. A recent bill in California (SB403,) emerging from the anti-caste activism in the technology industry, also proposed to add explicit legal caste protections in the US. Caste has been added in nondiscrimination policies of universities like Brown and Brandeis and firms like Apple and IBM in the last 3 years. This recent attention is set against a long-standing counter-narrative in the global Indian diaspora that computing is essentially meritocratic and, thus, casteless.


In this talk, I show how this myth of castelessness is produced, maintained, broken or worked-around within the global computing industry. I discuss how caste is reconfigured in the modern context of computing, how casteism is sustained and kept hidden, how casteist narratives of merit are challenged, and consequently, why this matters. To do this, I will draw on two years of ethnographic work in India and the Indian diaspora with Dalit (formerly untouchable) and upper-caste women engineers to reveal the relationship between caste, gender and computing. I will elaborate how a Dalit feminist study of caste and its complexities offer methodological and epistemological interventions in the analysis of socio-cultural worlds of technology 

November 27, 2023 (In-Person)

Davide Carpano
PhD Candidate
Sociology and Science Studies
UC San Diego

The Corporate Roots of Free and Open Source Software: IBM’s Adoption of the Linux Operating System, 1998-2005

This talk discusses IBM’s adoption of the Linux operating system between 1998-2005, documenting an early episode of corporate adoption of free and open source software (FOSS). My research – based on 30 oral histories, and a broad range of archival documents – complicates narratives around the origins of FOSS, which see it as a movement rooted in the needs and practices of developers who are depicted as craftsmen or artisans that protect their projects from corporate incursion. Contrary to this view, I show how corporate participation played a critical role in shaping key FOSS projects like Linux, contributing to the success they have enjoyed over the previous two decades. During this time, FOSS has become a critical part of the infrastructure undergirding data capitalism, enabling and facilitating flows of data. In this talk I will discuss how IBM played a role in creating the social infrastructure through which these open projects could be influenced by corporate actors and discuss the implications of my research for our understanding of how power functions in open sociotechnical systems.

December 4, 2023

"We are All Latourians Now"

Bruno Latour’s Legacy for the Practical Ethics of Ecology and Health

Please visit the website for details and registration

No Colloquium

Finals Week

Winter Quarter 2024

January 8, 2024

Science Studies Program Meeting
SSP faculty and students only 

January 15, 2024

No Colloquium
Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday 

January 22, 2024 (Zoom Lecture)

Caley Horan
Associate Professor
History Department
MIT
 

January 29, 2024

TBD

 

February 5, 2024 (Zoom Lecture)

Nick Seaver
Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Director, Science, Technology & Society
Tufts University
 

February 12, 2024 (Zoom Lecture)

Leah Horgan
Postdoctoral Fellow (Computing Innovation Fellow)
Northwestern University

February 19, 2024

Presidents' Day Holiday
No Colloquium
 

February 26, 2024 

Susanna Lindstrom
Visiting scholar at Scripps: KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Stockholm, Sweden
 
 

March 4, 2024 

Joyce Havstad
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy
University of Utah
 

March 11, 2024

Chris Willoughby
Assistant Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies
University of Nevada

March 18, 2024

No Colloquium
Finals Week

Spring Quarter 2024

April 1, 2024

Science Studies Program Meeting
SSP faculty and students only  

April 8, 2024 

TBD

  

April 15, 2024

Salih Can Aciksoz
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
UC Los Angeles
 

April 22, 2024 

Brad Werner
Professor
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
UC San Diego

April 29, 2024 

BoYun Chen
Associate Professor
History & Asian Studies
Swathmore
 

May 13, 2024

OPEN

May 20, 2024

TBD

 

May 27, 2024

No Colloquium
Memorial Day Observance

June 3, 2024

OPEN

 

 

 

  

Archive

2020s

2010s

2000s

2000-2001

Ricahrd Boyd, Cornell University
John Helly, SD Supercomputer Center
Thomas Dunlap, Texas A&M University
Larry Schneiderman, UC San Diego
Greg Bantick, Pacific College of Oriental Medicine
Rick Jonasse, UC San Diego
JoAnne Yates, MIT
Joseph Goguen, UC San Diego
Rogers Hollingsworh, University of Wisconsin
Peter Galison, Harvard University
James Fleming, Colby College
Scott Miles, U.S. Geological Survey, Western Region Earthquake Hazards Team
Jean Lave, UC Berkeley
Sandra Mitchell, University of Pittsburgh.
John Kadvany, Principal, Policy and Decision Science, Menlo Park
Helen Rozwadowski
Kaspar Elkildsen, Graduate student at Freie Universitat, Berlin.
Craig Callender, UC San Diego
Rick Grush
Fernando Elichirigoity, Long Island University
Lawance Badash, UC Santa Barbara
Peter Reill

2001-2002

Ed Hutchins, UC San Diego
Paul Churchland, UC San Diego
Chandra Mukerji, UC San Diego
Patricia Churchland, UC San Diego
Steven Quartz, Cal Tech
Geoffrey Bowker, UC San Diego
Benjamin Sims, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Michael Root, University of Minnesota
Helena Karasti, Visiting Post Doctoral Researcher
Linda Strauss, Pacific Northwest College of Art
Dominique Boullier, Universite' de Technologie
William Clark, UC San Diego Affiliate and NSF Scholar
Kasper Eskildsen, Freie Universitat
Robert Brain, Harvard University
Wenda Bauchspies, Penn State Univeristy
Aaron Mauck, UC San Diego
Evelyn Fox Keller, Cal Tech/MIT
David Kaiser, MIT
Assistant Professor, Program in Science, Technology, and
Richardson, University of British Columbia
Martha Poon, UC San Diego
Bruno Latour, Center de sociologie de 1novation at the Ecole nationale superieure de mines
Charles Briggs, UC San Diego
Warwick Anderson, UCSF

2002-2003

Robert Engler, UC San Diego
John Cloud, 2002 SIO Ritter Fellow and Cornell University
Michael Curry, UCLA
Caitlin Zaloom, Berkeley
Robert Kohler, University of Pennsylvania
Paul Rabinow, Berkeley
Steve Jackson, UC San Diego
Miriam Padolsky, UC San Diego
Cathryn Carson, UC Berkeley
Nancy Cartwright, UC San Diego/London School of Economics
Anat Leibler, UC San Diego
William Bechtel, UC San Diego
Norton Wise, UCLA
Derek Jensen, UC San Diego
Mauricio Suarez ,Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain

2003-2004

Sigrid Schmalzer, UC San Diego
Jim Fleming, Colby College
Adele Clark, UCSF
Fran Berman, UC San Diego San Diego Supercomputer Center
Lisa Cartwright, UC San Diego
Jed Buchwald, Cal Tech
Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of History
Sal Restivo, Harvey Mudd College
Robert Northcott, London School of Economics
Mary Morgan, London School of Economics
Grischa Metlay, UC San Diego
Ted Porter, UCLA
Andrew Hamilton, UC San Diego
Robert Nye, Oregon State University
Nadine Kozak, UC San Diego
Michael Bernstein, UC San Diego
Neil Thomason, University of Melbourne
Senior Lecturer, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
Zara Mirmalek, UC San Diego Science Studies Program/History Department
Martin Rudwick, University of Cambridge, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, UC San Diego
Mordechai Feingold, Cal Tech
Ernan McMullin, Notre Dame
Jane Maienschein, Arizona State University
Bernard Lightman, York University
Carmel Finley, UC San Diego

2004-2005

Klaas van Berkel, University of Groningen
Michael Evans, UC San Diego
Matt Crawford, UC San Diego
Grace Davie, UC San Diego
Richard C.J. Somerville, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Ron Rainger, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Patrick Carroll, UC Davis
Joel Braslow, UC San Diego
Jesse Richmond, UC San Diego
David Hollinger, UC Berkeley
Jonathan Erlen, University of Pittsburgh
James Griesemer, UC Davis
Domenico Bertoloni Meli, Indiana University
James Evans, University of Puget Sound
Natalie Jeremijenko, UC San Diego
Minakshi Menon, UC San Diego
Paul Hoyningen-Huene, University of Hanover (Germany)
Robert Westman, UC San Diego
Jessica Riskin, Stanford
John Beatty, University of British Columbia
Emily Thompson, UC San Diego
Paul Edwards, Michigan
Samuel Randalls, University of Birmingham (UK)
Lucy Suchman, Lancaster University
Joan Richards, Brown University
Martin Bunzl, Rutgers University
Ken Alder, Northwestern University
Stefan Timmermans, Harvard
Erich Conrad, UC San Diego
Monika Gisler, UCLA

2005-2006

Thomas Hughes, University of Pennsylvania
Simon Cole, UCI
Wendy Parker, UC San Diego
Maureen McNeill, University of Lancaster
Alison Wylie, University of Washington
Steve Luis, UC San Diego
Sophia Efstathiou, UC San Diego
Francis Longworth, University of Pittsburgh
Jon Guice, Green Mountain Engineering
F. Sherwood Rowland, UCI
Steve Huntsman, Naval Postgraduate School
Lesley Cormack, University of Alberta
Florence Millerand, UC San Diego
Robert F. Benjamin, Los Alamos Laboratory
Eden Medina, Indiana University
Kasper Eskildsen, UC San Diego
Erik Conway, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab
Tom Waidzunas, UC San Diego
Ray Chou, UC San Diego
Roger Bohn, UC San Diego
Lyn Headley, UC San Diego
Joan Cadden, UC Davis
Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard
Heather Flowe, UC San Diego
Christopher Smeenk, UCLA
Chris Mooney, author of "The Republican War on Science"
Dan Metlay, US Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board
Ev Meade, UC San Diego
John Heilbron, UC Berkeley
Pamela Long, Independent historian and Getty Scholar 2006-07

2006-2007

Alexandra Minna Stern, University of Michigan
Joseph Gabriel, UC San Diego
Sarah S. Lochlann Jain, Stanford University
Laura Harkewicz, UC San Diego
Sean Cadigan, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Kwan Min Lee, University of Southern California
Steven Epstein, UC San Diego
Morana Alac, UC San Diego
Brian Lindseth, UC San Diego
Eric Martin, UC San Diego
Adrienne Mayor, Stanford University
Matt Shindell, UC San Diego
Alper Yalcinkaya, UC San Diego
Bruce T. Moran, University of Nevada at Reno
Roddey Reid, UC San Diego
Margaret Garber, California State University Fullerton
Katherine Ott, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Peter Galison, Harvard University
Andrea Westermann, Technikgeschichte der ETH Zurich
Elizabeth Dunn, University of Colorado
Emma Johnson, UC San Diego
Cynthia Schairer, UC San Diego
Simon Werrett, University of Washington
Daniel Garber, Princeton University
Lindley Darden, University of Maryland

2007-2008

James Tabery, University of Utah
Jennifer Terry, UC Irvine
Tal Golan, UC San Diego
Sonja D. Schmid, Monterey Institute of International Studies
Tiago Mata, Technical University of Lisbon and Duke University
Reviel Netz, Stanford University
Thomas S. Mullaney, Stanford University
Tal Golan, UC San Diego
Kaushik Sunder Rajan, UC Irvine
Daniel A. Alexandrov, European University at St. Petersburg
Nancy Cartwright, UC San Diego
Samuel Kline Cohn, Jr., University of Glasgow
Nick Huggett, University of Illinois at Chicago
Gregory T. Cushman, University of Kansas
Sharon Traweek, UCLA
Jennifer L. Mnookin, UCLA
Karen Barad, UC Santa Cruz
Ruth Schwartz Cowan, University of Pennsylvania
Charis Thompson, UC Berkeley
Akos Rona-Tas, UC San Diego
Chandra Mukerji, UC San Diego

2008-2009

2009-2010

 

2010-2011

Marisa Brandt, UC San Diego
Richard Boyd, Cornell; W.Christopher Boyd, UC Berkeley; and Barbara Koslowski, Cornell
Gina Neff, University of Washington
Kirsten Ostherr, Rice University
Chandra Mukerji, UC San Diego
Sarah de Rijcke, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
April Huff, UC San Diego
Matthew Bietz, University of Washington
Alexander Marr, USC
Werner Callebaut, University of Vienna
Ronald Numbers, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Bastiann van Fraassen, San Francisco State University
Harun Kucuk, UC San Diego
Tanja Paulitz, Universitat Graz
Joseph Dumit, UC Davis
Elizabeth Petrick, UC San Diego
Joel Dimsdale, UC San Diego
Christopher Hitchcock, California Institute of Technology
Craig Callender, UC San Diego
Florence Hsia, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Carl Cranor, UC Riverside
Inmaculada de Melo-Martin, Weill Cornell Medical College
Karin Knorr-Cetina, University of Chicago
Hasok Chang, University of Cambridge

1990s

1997-1998

Steven Epstein, UC San Diego Sociology
Mara Harrell, UC San Diego Philosophy
Mark Hineline, UC San Diego History
Pauline Sargent, NSF
Margaret Garber, UC San Diego History
Allison Winter, California Institute of Technology
Marta Hanson, UC San Diego History
Diane Vaughan, Boston College
Stephen Toulmin, University of Southern California
Jim Moore, UC San Diego Anthropology
Chandra Mukerji, UC San Diego Sociology/Communication
Barbara Herrnstein-Smith, Duke University
Martin Rudwick, UC San Diego History
Ben Sims, UC San Diego Science Studies
Peter Dear, Cornell University
Joseph Gusfield, UC San Diego Sociology
Elizabeth Bates, UC San Diego Cognitive Science
Judith Halberstam, UC San Diego Literature
Shirley Strum, UC San Diego Anthropology
Adrian Cussins, UC San Diego Philosophy

1998-1999

Linda Liu, UC Berkeley
Naomi Oreskes, UC San Diego History
Francesca Bray, UC Santa Barbara
Angela Lakwete, UC San Diego
Ira Livingston, State University of New York, Stoneybrook
Val Hartouni, UC San Diego
Myles Jackson, Willamette University
Adrian Johns, UC San Diego
Gabrielle Hecht, Stanford University
Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics
Paul Teller, UC Davis
Pamela Smith, Pamona
Ted Porter, UCLA
Suzanne Kessler
Luce Giard, UC San Diego History
Margaret Meredith, UC San Diego
Susan Davis, UC San Diego Communication
Fred Spiess, UC San Diego
Vince Rafael, UC San Diego Communication
Eric Scerri, Purdue University
David Palumbo-Liu, Stanford University
Charlotte Furth, University of Southern California
Deb Harkness, UC Davis
Paolo Mancosu, UC Berkeley
Robert Adams, USD, Anthropology
Michael Shank, University of Wisconsin

1999-2000

Kathleen Walen, University of London, UC Davis
Geoffrey Bowker, UC San Diego Communication
Jeffrey Bub
Ronald Giere, University of Minnesota
Bogi Anderson, UC San Diego, Medicine
Philip Mirowski, University of Notre Dame
Pat Churchland, UC San Diego Philosophy
Andrew Feenberg, San Diego State University
William Freudenburg, University of Wisconsin
Stephan Fuchs, University of Virginia
Sigrid Schmalzer, UC San Diego
Lawrence Cohen, UC Berkeley
Leigh Star, UC San Diego Science Studies Program/History Department
Andrew Warwick, Imperial College, London
Nancy Nersessian, MIT
Joan Fujimura, Stanford