Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard

News

Below is some of the news relating to the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard Kennedy School. This is a new section of the website, and content is still being filled in.

Jump to: 2012 :: 2011 :: 2010 :: 2009 :: 2008 :: 2007 :: 2006

2012

Congratulations to Will Rafey, winner of the STS Undergraduate Prize, and to Melissa Oppenheim and Adrianna Stanley, who received honorable mentions in our annual essay competition!

The video from Anne Wojcicki's Science and Democracy lecture is now available! Follow the event coverage in the Wall Street Journal and Harvard Gazette.

STS Fellows Mads Dahl Gjefsen has been profiled by the Norwegian newspaper GD. In it, he describes his on-going research on carbon capture and storage and talks about the conversations taking place in Harvard's STS Program.  

2011

On April 30, 2012, we will be hosting "Human Nature in the Public Sphere", a symposium with John Carson (Michigan) and Baruch Fishhoff (Carnegie Mellon); co-sponsored with the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard.

The video from Anne Wojcicki's Science and Democracy lecture is now available! Follow the event coverage in the Wall Street Journal and Harvard Gazette.

STS Fellows Mads Dahl Gjefsen has been profiled by the Norwegian newspaper GD. In it, he describes his on-going research on carbon capture and storage and talks about the conversations taking place in Harvard's STS Program.            

2010

The Program on STS has produced a Yearbook for 2008-2010. This booklet contains information about the people, events, and initatives associated with the Program on STS during this time. The program has also released a Fall 2010 newsletter on its most recent activities.

2009

The STS Program and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences welcomed their first joint post-doc, Samuel Evans, who recently received his D.Phil. from Oxford University and works on the politics of international export regulations of "dual-use" technologies.

The STS Program welcomed the first Bassetti Foundation fellow, Maggie Curnutte, who works on direct to consumer marketing of genetic tests. The Bassetti Foundation encourages research and dissemination related to responsible innovation in science and technology.

Over the summer, the STS Program hosted the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Science and Democracy Network. The Ninth Annual Meeting will be held in the UK, in collaboration with the Royal Society, on June 28-30, 2010.

On May 7-8, the STS Program observed the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow's lecture on the "Two Cultures" with a panel discussion and workshop on the theme "Cultures in Common." For a report of the event, see "Still 'two cultures' but who's on top?"

The Science and Democracy Lecture Series hosted a talk by Raghuram Rajan on December 2 and a panel discussion on the theme of "Connected Publics" on March 11.

On March 1, 2009, Sheila Jasanoff received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study the impact of the 1993 Supreme Court decision Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. on the production and use of scientific evidence.

2008

In November, The STS Program held a workshop in Cambridge entitled "Sociotechnical Imaginaries: Cross-National Comparisons" supported by a grant from the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. The workshop complemented the Program's NSF-funded research project on the same theme.

On November 12, the Science and Democracy Lecture Series hosted a talk by Ulrich Beck. Harold Varmus spoke in the series on April 3.

In October, STS Director Sheila Jasanoff delivered the Messenger Lectures at Cornell University on the theme "After Enlightenment: Rethinking Science's Place in Democracy."

In August, the STS Program collaborated with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the European School of Molecular Medicine (SEMM) in Milan to host a summer school on Deconstructing and Reconstructing Life: From Classification to Design.

On June 29-July 1, the STS Program hosted the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Science and Democracy Network.

In June, the STS Program received a generous grant from the Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) to support varied activities at the intersection of STS and environmental studies.

2007

In September, Sheila Jasanoff and STS Fellow Sang-Hyun Kim received a grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct a comparative study of "sociotechnical imaginaries" in the United States, South Korea, and Germany.

In June, the STS Program collaborated with the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge to co-sponsor the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Science and Democracy Network.

In April, the STS Program inaugurated the Science and Democracy Lecture Series, funded by a generous private donor, with a talk by Yaron Ezrahi on April 9. The second event in the series was a lecture by William Cronon on November 29.

2006

In the fall, the STS Program inaugurated the STS Circle, a weekly forum for interdisciplinary conversations about contemporary issues in science and technology that are relevant to people in fields such as anthropology, history of science, sociology, STS, law, government, public policy, and the natural sciences.

On December 1, 2006, Sheila Jasanoff received an honorary degree from the University of Twente, Netherlands. It was the first time in the university's 45-year history that they so honored a woman. Press releases from the University of Twente have been archived here: August 31 (Dutch), September 7 (English), November 9 (Dutch), and December 7 (Dutch).