Advisory Board

David Bates' current project explores the problem of "human insight" in the rationalist tradition. He is particularly interested in rhetorical conceptions of knowledge in Enlightenment scientific epistemology, in logic and science in 19th-century thought, and in theories of insight at the intersections of 20th-century psychology, philosophy of science, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence research.

Elena Conis is a writer and historian of medicine, health, and the environment. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, Elena was a history professor and the Mellon Fellow in Health and Humanities at Emory University, the Cain Fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and an award-winning health columnist for the Los Angeles Times. She holds a PhD in history from UCSF (where she is an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine), masters degrees in journalism and public health from Berkeley, and a bachelors...

My research focuses on the anthropology of the biochemical sciences, global pharmaceutical politics, and postcolonial engagements with intellectual property and the politics of innovation and appropriation. These themes animated my 2003 book, When Nature Goes Public: The Making and Unmaking of Bioprospecting in Mexico, which examined the consequences of novel drug discovery partnerships linking global drug companies, Latin American research scientists, and indigenous communities. A key theme emerging from that work was how new deployments of the idioms of intellectual property serve as...

Professor, Department of History
Director, PhD Designated Emphasis in STS
Director, OHST

Massimo Mazzotti's research interests lie at the intersection of the history of science and science studies. He is especially interested in the historicity and situatedness of mathematics, logic, and deductive reasoning, and in the social processes that can make them universally valid. He is also interested in using technological systems and artifacts as ways of entry for the explorations of specific forms of social organization and...