For the first time, CSTMS, in close collaboration with the undergraduate major in Interdisciplinary Studies, will be offering an undergraduate survey course in STS. Science, Technology, and Society Spring 2015 Lead Instructors: Massimo Mazzotti (History) and David Winickoff (ESPM) Guest lecturers: Freyja Knapp, Marissa Mika, Hélène Mialet, and Michele Pridmore-Brown. Be it bugs, buildings, or bits, what… Read more

CSTMS is thrilled that Freyja Knapp is joining the Center this semester as a Graduate Fellow. As a long-term member of the CSTMS community, Freyja is excited to be working with the Center this semester and brings a passion for driving CSTMS forward. Freyja will be working on programmatic activity such as the Fall 2014 Colloquium… Read more

The Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley invites applications for a tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level in the History and Rhetoric of Science and Technology, for an expected start date of July 1, 2015. At the time of application, applicants must either have a Ph.D. or equivalent, or be near… Read more

CSTMS Associate Director Sam Weiss Evans gave a talk to the United Nations’ Biological Weapons Convention Meeting of Experts in Geneva on August 6, 2014. He and several of his colleagues presented on work they have been doing as part of the British ESRC/AHRC/DSTL funded grant on The Formulation and Non-formulation of Security Concerns: Preventing… Read more

CSTMS Director Massimo Mazzotti writes “Faking Galileo” which examines a recent forgery of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius, a landmark book in the history of science.  Mazzotti links this episode to larger questions about the role of scholars’ own projections and expectations on their interpretations.  “Faking Galileo” is a feature article in the Spring 2014 Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB) Quarterly Journal.… Read more

The Peder Sather Center for Advanced Study has awarded CSTMS Director Massimo Mazzotti and Professor Asdal of Norway $15,000 for their joint research project, The Berkeley-Olso Initiative in Valuation Studies. “Valuation studies” is an emergent field that focuses on the practices and politics whereby various entities (e.g. nature objects, market entities) are modified and ascribed with economic values in… Read more

Led by Sam Weiss Evans, David Winickoff and 19 other Science and Technology Studies authors have commented on a recent Nature special issue on synthetic biology. Their letter to the editor focuses on replying to “Time to settle the synthetic controversy” by Volker ter Meulen. The full text of a preprint version of the letter is below. Synthetic biology: missing the point… Read more