Calls for Papers/Conference Announcements

[09/08/09] Call for Proposals

Workshop for the Next Generation of Science and Technology Policy Leaders

Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes

Arizona State

Tempe, Arizona

May 16-19, 2010


Complex problems of science, technology, and society are conspicuously, perhaps uniquely, apparent in national politics today. Where is the community of science policy scholars who can span the terrains of intellectual inquiry and real-world practice to contribute to public deliberation and democratic decision making on these problems?


The *Workshop for the Next Generation of Science and Technology Policy Leaders* aims to build a small community of particularly promising early career individuals who can participate effectively in science and technology policy (STP) activities, broadly construed, taking advantage of the current national attention given to STP issues and dilemmas.

The workshop constitutes the heart of a larger Conference on the Rightful Place of Science that CSPO is organizing. The conference and workshop will convene Monday morning May 16, 2010, and will adjourn mid-day on Wednesday May 18, 2010. Next Generation participants will share special events at the Conference with internationally prominent keynote speakers and “exemplars” of science and policy practice.

CSPO calls for proposals to participate in the Workshop. A complete proposal consists of three parts:

  1. abstract summarizing research activities to be presented at the workshop, including a choice of theme track (see below);
  2. a brief essay on the significance of the research topic for real-world science and technology policy problems; and
  3. biographical information.

Each item is limited to one page of single-spaced text.

Eligible applicants will have received their PhD (or other terminal degree) in 2004 or more recently, and will not be in a tenured position. Selection criteria will be (1) intellectual quality; (2) clear relevance to STP issues; and (3) evidence of effective communication skills.

We intend to fully support 12 participants. We are strongly committed to ensuring appropriate diversity among the supported participants. Successful applicants will have their participation in the Workshop and Conference funded by CSPO and will receive an honorarium for writing both a scholarly paper and a paper on the same subject but for more general audiences.

Proposals must be submitted to one of six theme tracks:

1. Responsible Innovation: How can we improve the decisions that individuals, organizations, and governments make throughout the process of knowledge-based innovation?

2. Sustainability and Adaptability: How can we construct and maintain good social and institutional relationships with nature and with one another to respond to a changing planet and ensure a fair and prosperous future for humanity?

3. Science, Technology, and Global Affairs: How do we create, evaluate, and deliberate on the knowledge and technological systems necessary for a globalizing world, across the multitude of cultural understandings of both deliberation and knowledge in that world?

4. Technological Systems and Infrastructures: How can we understand and manage the complex systems and structures we build and depend on, and which seem to have a momentum of their own?

5. Healthy & Just Societies: How can human well-being and justice become a central element of research, innovation, and development?

6. Securing our Common Future: How can we create a shared sense of individual and mutual security in a politically and technologically dynamic, and culturally diverse world?

Please submit proposal materials by October 25, 2009 to cspo@asu.edu <mailto:cspo@asu.edu>

For more information, contact cspo@asu.edu <mailto:cspo@asu.edu>

Visit CSPO.org <http://www.cspo.org/>


[08/11/09] Call for Manuscripts: “Engineering and the Workplace”

Theme issue of Engineering Studies: Journal of the International  Network for Engineering Studies
Editors: Gary Downey (Virginia Tech) & Juan Lucena (Colorado School of  Mines)
Guest Editor: Aditya Johri (Virginia Tech)

This theme issue of Engineering Studies invites submissions from  scholars who examine engineers and engineering in workplaces.

What does it mean to practice engineering in the workplace? What are  engineering work practices? How do engineers’ identities change from  workplace to workplace? How do engineers shape workplaces and vice  versa? Engineering educators and researchers often claim deep  connections to the engineering workplace, yet relatively little  research has actually been done on engineers at work. The editors are  interested in organizational, historical, social, cultural,  philosophical, ethical, and rhetorical studies of engineers and  engineering in the context of the workplace.

Possible submission topics include, but are not limited to, the  following:

--  Ethnographies of engineers in workplaces focused on engineering work
--  Histories of engineers in the workplace  --  Changes in the nature of engineering work (e.g., shifts from  hierarchical to network-based work structures, pervasiveness of  digital technologies in the engineering workplace)
--  Mediation of work practices through artifacts designed by engineers
--  Engineering workplaces and the education and training of engineers
--  Interdisciplinary collaborations among engineers and non-engineers  in the workplace
--  Globalization of the engineering workplace
--  The physical and social design of engineering work and workplace

Scholars from all disciplines are invited to submit manuscripts. We  are particularly interested in manuscripts that may contribute to and  facilitate broader discussions and debates about engineering  education, research, practice, policy, and representation. We prefer  empirical papers for this issue but are open to diverse methodological  approaches and intellectual perspectives. We welcome submissions that  examine different engineering disciplines – software, mechanical,  electrical, chemical, etc.

Submission Guidelines: Interested authors should submit titles and  350-500 word abstracts by September 15, 2009 to the Guest Editor,  Aditya Johri, Department of Engineering Education, Virginia Tech, ajohri@vt.edu . Please be sure to include contact information and institutional  affiliation as well. The Guest Editor will invite a maximum of five  manuscripts for full consideration. Papers are expected to be  8000-10,000 words in length. All submitted manuscripts will be subject  to the journal's normal double-blind review process. Completed draft  manuscripts will be due March 2010.

Engineering Studies is published three times yearly. For more  information, including author guidelines, see: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/engineeringstudies

Gary Downey
Alumni Distinguished Professor
Department of Science and Technology in  Society
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061
www.downey.sts.vt.edu

[08/11/09] Crisis and Consequence

Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society

Hagley Museum and Library

Wilmington, Delaware

November 5, 2010

 

Econonmic crises have been the midwife to dramatic social change throughout American history. For a conference on Friday, November 5, 2010, the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware invites proposals for imaginative essays that explore the long-term consequences of panics, depression, financial contractions, and other episodes in which the American economy dramatically declined. Papers should suggest significant relationship between such episodes and societal change, including (but not limited to) migration, religion, consumption patterns, technological change, and business practices. We welcome proposals based on new research, as well as unpublished synthetic essays drawing on extensive secondary literature. Papers drawing attention to the little-known or little-appreciated impacts of crises would be especially compelling.

Proposals of approximately 500 words summarizing the paper's argument and sources accompanied by a c.v. of no more than two pages are due by March 1, 2010. Travel funds may be available for those presenting papers. Please direct proposals or queries to Carol Lockman, clockman@Hagley.org or 302-658-2400.

 

Annual Meeting of The Society for the History of Technology

Pittsburgh, Pa.

October 15-19, 2009

The Society for the History of Technology will hold its annual meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 15-19, 2009. The Program Committee invites paper and panel proposals on any topic in the history of technology,  broadly defined. Sessions dealing with pre-19th century technologies are particularly welcome. Of special interest for 2009 are proposals that engage the two following themes:
Reform(ed) Technologies: While Pittsburgh often brings to historically-prone minds images of coke works and heavy industrial pollution, the city is consistently ranked high in livability surveys of American cities, and smokestacks no longer dominate the skyline. At a moment when decaying infrastructure is a major topic of public discussion and large promised investment, Pittsburgh looks the right place for historians of technology to reconsider linear tales of innovation or destruction. We are interested both in the ways technologies are reformed and on the historical development of technologies for reform. Environmental technologies are an obvious topic, but the theme also welcomes contributions on urban renewal, new uses of old technologies, and issues of maintenance.
Circulation of Technology: We encourage proposals dealing with the geographical circulation of technology that discard traditional diffusion models. We are interested in the relevance of local contexts to accounts of how technologies circulate at the global scale. We hope that focused engagement with such questions will also contribute to SHOT's ongoing efforts to build a more inclusive and diverse cosmopolitan community.

The Program Committee's highest priority in evaluating paper and panel proposals is scholarly excellence. The Committee welcomes proposals for individual papers or sessions, as well as works-in-progress from researchers of all stripes (including graduate students, chaired professors, and independent scholars). It welcomes proposals from those new to SHOT, regardless of discipline. Multinational, international, and cross-institutional sessions are also desirable. We especially encourage proposals from non-Western scholars. For the 2009 meeting, the Program Committee also encourages unconventional sessions; that is. session formats that vary in useful ways from the typical three/four papers with comment. These might include roundtable sessions, workshop-style sessions with papers that are pre-circulated electronically, or "author meets critics" sessions. Panel organizers may choose either to have a commentator or to add one more paper. We also welcome poster proposals for presentation in poster sessions.

General information:
While SHOT rules exclude multiple submissions (i.e submitting more than one individual paper proposal, or proposing both an individual paper and a paper as part of a session), scholars may both propose a paper and serve as a commentator or session chair. Presenting at the 2008 SHOT meeting will not rule out presenting in 2009.

For more information about the Society for the History of Technology and our annual meeting, please see the SHOT webpage:
http://www.historyoftechnology.org/ For questions, please contact SHOT secretary Bernie Carlson at shot@virginia.edu

Change at SHOT Pittsburgh Meeting:
In Pittsburgh, SHOT will be experimenting with a new format of turning over our Sunday morning program slots to our Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and associated groups, for some to organize their own paper sessions, workshops, roundtables, or other events.  If you are involved with one of our SIGs or wish to be, please watch for news of this from your SIG officers or contact them for more information (contact info for SIGs is available through the SHOT webpage). We welcome rich creative ideas.

Science,

Darwin in the 21st Century: Nature, Humanity, and God

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame, Indiana

November 1-3, 2009

The John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values and the Science, Theology and the Ontological Quest project present Darwin in the 21st Century: Nature, Humanity, and God, November 1-3, 2009, at the University of Notre Dame, Center for Continuing Education, McKenna Hall, in Notre Dame, Indiana. This international conference is devoted to evolutionary theory in its scientific, anthropological, philosophical, and theological dimensions as a contribution to the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species.

Conference Goals

Call for Papers

20 minute contributed papers on topics of relevance to the conference themes will be accepted for simultaneous sessions on November 2 and 3. Abstracts of 200 words and brief C.V.s are due by June 12, 2009, with notification of acceptance by

June 19, 2009. Abstracts and proposals should be emailed to nd.reilly.31@nd.edu

For more information, call the University of Notre Dame’s Reilly Center at: (574) 631-5015, or email the Center at reilly@nd.edu