GRiSTS Conference | Submerged Futures: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Forgetting

First annual Conference on Graduate Research in Science and Technology Studies (GRiSTS).

September 4-5, 2020

Attend this event via Zoom (registration required by Tuesday, September 1).

Friday, September 4, 2020

9:30-9:45 | Welcome

• Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School.

9:45-10:00 | Introductions

10:00-10:25 | Faculty Pop-up 1

• “Technology and Public Purpose”
  Laura Manley, Director, Technology and Public Purpose Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School.

10:25-10:30 | Break

10:30-11:15 | Panel 1: Expert Practices & Biofutures

• Moderator: Joanna Radin, Associate Professor of History of Medicine and History, Department of HIstory, Yale University.
• “How Medical Practices are Collectively Forgotten: The Case of Vaginal Breech Delivery”
  Tzipy Lazar-Schoef, PhD Candidate, Graduate Program in Science, Technology and Society, Bar-Ilan University.
• "The De-extinction We Have, and the One We Might Have Had: A View from a Road Untaken”
  Itamar Avneri, PhD Candidate, Graduate Program in Science, Technology and Society, Bar-Ilan University.
• “Imaginary Futures: Reverse-Engineering Risk in Synthetic Biology”
  Carolyn Bailey, PhD Candidate, Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, Harvard University.
• “'The Constitution – and snail darters – BOTH SAVED!': A Bioconstitutional Moment”
  Mary Richie McGuire, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
• "Managing Genetic Afflictions at the Margins: Sickle Cell Disease in India”
  Sanghamitra Das, PhD Candiate, Social Studies of Science and Technology, Arizona State University.

11:15-12:00 | Panel 1 Discussion

12:00-12:15 | Break

12:15-1:15 | Lunch Discussion: Publishing and Professional Development

• Edward Hackett, Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Brandeis University.
• Stephanie Bird, Founding Co-Editor, Science and Engineering Ethics.
• Gili Vidan, PhD Candidate, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University.
• Trevor Pinch, Goldwin Smith Professor of Science & Technology Studies, Department of Science & Technology Studies, Cornell University.

1:15-1:30 | Break

1:30-2:15 | Panel 2: Space, Climate & Catastrophe

• Discussant: Scott Frickel, Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Brown University.
• “Being-in-Air: Race, Capitalism, and the Geopolitical Economy of Urbanization”
  William Conroy, PhD Student, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University.
• “Re-submerging the Fens: The Imagined Futures of Climate Change, Conservation, and Agriculture”
  Christian Espinosa Schatz, PhD Candidate, School of the Environment, Yale University.
• “The Model and the Metric: Room for the River as Abstract Nature”
  Lizzie Yarina, Design Researcher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• “Distributed Affect and the Transformational Perspective of Photographs of the Earth”
  Anthony Naim, York University.
• “Terraforming Beautiful China: South China Sea Islands, Chang’e Lunar Exploration, and Making the Chinese State”
  Jonathan Galka, PhD Candidate, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University. 
  Laurence Bashford, PhD Candidate, Program in Theatre and Performance, Columbia University.

2:15-3:00 | Panel 2: Discussion

3:00-3:25 | Faculty Pop-up 2

 

• “Economic Imaginations of Climate Policy” 
  Rob Stavins, A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development, Harvard Kennedy School.

3:25-3:45 | Break

3:45-4:30 | Panel 3: Collective Imaginaries / Imagined Communities

• Moderator: Steve Hilgartner, Professor, Department of Science & Technology Studies, Cornell University.
• “The Family of Man’s Peril: Thermonuclear Weapons and the Species as Political Subject”
  Daniel Zimmer, PhD Candidate, Department of Government, Cornell University.
• “Disrupting Disruptive Liberation: Alternative Discursive Frames for the Public Contestation of Smart City Visions”
  Nicole West Bassoff, PhD Candidate, Public Policy and Science, Technology & Society, Harvard Kennedy School.
• “Race Back to Diversity: Mapping Genetic History and National Identities in Southeast Asian National Genome Projects”
  Tiên-Dung Ha, PhD Candidate, Department of Science & Technology Studies, Cornell University.
• “Locating the State in the Restaurant”
  Anna Nguyen, PhD Candidate, L’institut National de la Recherche Scientifique.
• “Space Reserved: Architecture, Undergrounds, and the Question Concerning Nuclear Technology”
  Eliyahu Keller, PhD Candidate, History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Artprogram, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

4:30-5:15 | Panel 3 Discussion

5:15 | GRiSTS Open Zoom Room

Saturday, September 5, 2020

9:30-10:00 | Faculty Pop-up 3

• "Democracy & Technology" 
  Archon Fung, Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government, Harvard Kennedy School.

10:00-10:45 | Panel 4: Automating Work(ers)

• Discussant: Jason Jackson, Assistant Professor of Political Economy and Urban Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• “Technolegal Vanguards and Arrested Design in Algorithmic Discovery”
  Fernando Delgado, PhD Candidate, Department of Information Science, Cornell University.
• “Augmenting or Automating? Breathing Life into the Uncertain Promise of Artificial Intelligence”
  Kevin Lee, PhD Candidate, Stern School of Business, New York University.
• “'It’s like I’m looking down the wrong end of a telescope': Sensing Time through Memory, Reenactment, and Visualization in
  Cornwall’s Historic Mines”
  Caroline White-Nockleby, PhD Candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• “Sociocultural Learning in Virtual Worlds: 20th Century Approaches to 21st Century EdTech”
  Eileen McGivney, PhD Candidate, Human Development, Learning, and Teaching, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

10:45-11:30 | Panel 4 Discussion

11:30-11:45 | Break

11:45-12:45 | Lunch Discussion: Crisis & Solidarity

• Shobita Parthasarathy, Professor of Public Policy, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan.
• Ruha Benjamin, Associate Professor; Arthur H. Scribner Bicentennial Preceptor, Department of African American Studies, Princeton University.
• Lisa Messeri, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, Yale University.
• Phil Brown, University Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Health Sciences, Bouvé College of Health Sciences, Northeastern University.
• Matthew Sample, Senior Research Fellow, Program on Science, Technology, and Society, Harvard Kennedy School.

12:45–1:00 | Break

1:00-1:45 | Panel 5: Globalization & Governance

• Discussant: Saptirashi Bandopadhyay, Assistant Professor​​​​​​​, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University.
• “Undercurrents of the Marketplace of Ideas”
  Laura Fichtner, PhD Candidate, Department of Informatics​​​​​​​, Universität Hamburg.
• “Unearthing European Agricultures: Glyphosate Phase-out and the Politics of Contested Agri-food Futures in France”
  Fiona Kinniburgh, PhD Candidate, Environmental Politics and Technology, Technical University of Munich.
• “The Submerged Infrastructures of the Global Data Economy: Undersea Cables and International Law”
  Roxana Vatanparast, Visiting Researcher, Institute for Global Law and Policy, Harvard Law School.
• “Containing Globalization: A Material History of Postnational Governance Through Shipping Containers (1956-2001)”
  Daniel Ricardo Quiroga-Villamarin, PhD Candidate, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.
• “Shifting Paradigms of Uncertainty in Sociotechnical Energy Systems”
  Joshua Loughman, Lecturer, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering​​​​​​​, Arizona State University.

1:45-2:30 | Panel 5 Discussion

2:30-2:55 | Faculty Pop-up 4

• "Expertise & Global Law" 
  David Kennedy, Faculty Associate. Manley O. Hudson Professor of Law, Harvard Law School.

2:55-3:00 | Break

3:00-3:30 | Pop-up Reflection Discussion

• "STS & Policy"

3:30-3:45 | GRiSTS Open Zoom Room

Co-sponsored by the Program on Science, Technology & Society and the Harvard University Center for the Environment.