Deakin Science and Society Network Newsletter
March 2024
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In this issue
NEWS & EVENTS
HIGHLIGHTS
UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES
To contribute news item
or events to the SSN newsletter, please email
ssn-...@deakin.edu.au
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Deakin Anthropology Seminar: 'Science and Technology’s role in the Carceral Ecologies of Los
Angeles' with Nicholas Shapiro
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Thursday 7 March 14:00- 16:00
Deakin Downtown or via Zoom
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Join Deakin anthropology seminar series hosts David Giles and Timothy Neale at Deakin Downtown as they host
A/ Prof Nicholas Shapiro
of UCLA. You can also join the seminar via Zoom.
Abstract: At Carceral Ecologies, a multidisciplinary lab based in the Institute for Society and Genetics, we have been working to understand the role of science and technology in advancing racialized mass incarcerations in Los Angeles—home to the world’s largest
jail system. We have been focusing both on one of the headwaters of policing—surveillance—and one of its gruesome termini—in-custody deaths. We seek to push beyond identifying undone science and move towards conducting analyses with impacted community members
to understand long standing racialized violence. We bring with us a commitment to “wary alliances” to advance the questions articulated by our community partners that exceed standard anthropology of science practice. In this presentation we will detail our
work on helicopter police surveillance, driven by military contractors and co-signed by NASA, and the way that medical examiners provide biomedical alibis to Sheriff narratives for in-custody deaths.
Meeting ID: 864 9090 7783
Password: 02325400
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HPS Seminar: 'The Two Truths: "Harmonizing" Catholicism and Science' with Sarah Walsh
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Wednesday 13 March 2024 12:00 - 13:00
University of Melbourne, Old Arts (building 149) Room 239 (North Lecture theatre)
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Join the University of Melbourne's HPS (History Philosophy and Social Studies of Science) seminar series
for a paper by Sarah Walsh
(University of Melbourne)
This paper examines the interconnections and relationship between Catholicism and eugenics in early-twentieth-century Chile. Specifically, it demonstrates that the popularity of eugenic science was not diminished by the influence of Catholicism there. In fact,
both eugenics and Catholicism worked together to construct the concept of a unique Chilean race, la raza chilena. It will argue that a major factor that facilitated this conceptual overlap was a generalized belief among historical actors that male and female
gender roles were biologically determined and therefore essential to a properly functioning society
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SSN Seminar: 'Motherhood on Ice' with Marcia Inhorn
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Join the SSN as we host Anthropology Professor
Marcia Inhorn (Yale) for a seminar on her latest book. Marcia will be joined in conversation by Associate
Professor Neera Bhatia, a scholar of law, bioethics, health and reproduction, after her talk.
Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs (NYU
Press, 2023), draws upon interviews with more than 150 American women to explore their use of egg freezing as a fertility preservation technology. Their stories show that, contrary to popular belief, egg freezing is rarely about women postponing fertility
for the sake of their careers. Rather, the most-educated women are increasingly forced to delay childbearing because they face a mating gap—a lack of eligible, educated, equal partners ready for marriage and parenthood. For these women, egg freezing is a reproductive
backstop, a technological attempt to bridge the gap while waiting for the right partner. But it is not an easy choice for most. Their stories reveal why egg freezing is logistically complicated, physically taxing, financially demanding, emotionally draining,
and uncertain in its effects. Yet, for many “thirty-something” women, egg freezing offers the future hope of partnership, pregnancy, and parenthood.
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Save the date: SSN Emerging Issues in Science and Society (EISS)
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14 June 2024 Deakin Downtown (Keynote Livestreamed)
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Mark your calendars for the 2024 SSN Emerging Issues in Science and Society Event. This year we are delighted
to be hosting digital anthropologist and Feminist 'future of work' luminary, Payal
Arora (Utrecht) along with Deakin's
REDI
(Research for Educational Impact) and
CDII
(Critical Digital Infrastructures and Interfaces).
Stay tuned for an exciting programme that will place Payal's important research in conversation with Emerging Issues in Science and Society under the theme 'Futures of work'.
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AUS STS 2023 Recap published on Backchannels
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In July 2023, the Australasian Science and Technology Studies Network (AusSTS) held its conference themed
'Contributing to and with STS" at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. At the end of Day 2, conference attendees came together for a final plenary, with Carina Truyts (funded by the SSN), Jianni Tien, Dan Santos, and Ella Butler.
In this 4s Backchannels recap, the panelists chose the dialogue genre to echo both the format and the substance of the conference, writing
"We felt that the dialogue format honoured this spirit of AusSTS – as something open-ended rather than fixed, as something emergent rather than already defined, and as something that is community-built by people joined together ‘in cahoots’ rather than hierarchically
organised... [While] we provide no final answers as to what ‘Australasian STS’ is, we end this piece with a nod towards the future, the next AusSTS meeting, and the next opening in this unfolding dialogue".
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Book Launch: 'Haunting Biology: Science and Indigeneity in Australia' by Emma Kowal
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Tuesday 5 March 2024
Readings, State Library of Victoria
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The SSN's Founder, former Convenor and Healthy Futures Streamleader Professor
Emma Kowal's brilliant new book 'Haunting Biology: Science and Indigeneity in Australia' (Duke University Press) was launched on 5 March at Readings in the State
library. The event was extremely well attended.
Professor Lynette Russell (AM)
highlighted that the book does not merely recount a "pale male stale history". Rather, "Emma's book is alive, with individuals and collectives- even when they are fragmented, disformed and disparate". She noted that the book "outlines an ethically conscious
self-reflexive model for how to conduct research in this space". Professor
Warwick Anderson drew attention to Emma's creative framework (informed by her interdisciplinary training) and the Indigenous spectres that scholars should attend
to. He described the 'affective power of spectrality' he experienced while reading, and encouraged readers to heed Emma's call not to suppress the spectres haunting Australia. The SSN congratulates Emma on what one attendee called "an academic page-turner"
You can read more about the book on Duke's
website, read an interview with Emma about the book and her Writing Life here,
and order it from Readings here.
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State Library Victoria fellowships 2024: Applications open
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Deadline: 5pm Tuesday,
26 March 2024
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The State Library offers a number of Fellowships, including the 'Climate Futures Artist fellowship,' specific fellowships for artists, children's storytellers, and researchers
of Victorian colonial history, and more.
The collection spans more than 5 million items, including books, manuscripts, maps, music, artwork, newspapers and objects. Immerse yourself, unearth hidden gems and create bold and imaginative work that expands our collective understanding of the nature of
libraries.
Fellowships don't stipulate the need for any particular experience or credentials. The State Library Victoria provides funding, a desk at the Library and a dedicated librarian
to help you find what you need.
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Borderline Images and how to use them: A Visual Medical Humanities Masterclass with Professor Ludmilla Jordanova
(Durham University)
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Thursday 6 June 2024, Canberra, Australia (travel grants available)
Application deadline: 1 April 2024
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This full-day masterclass with world leading historian of science and medicine, Professor Ludmilla Jordanova, is an opportunity for Honours, Masters and PhD students in Canberra
and around Australia to workshop new ideas and share original material that engages with the visual medical humanities, broadly conceived. It is also an opportunity to meet Professor Jordanova and each other.
The masterclass will focus on the use of art, visual and material culture, especially medical and scientific imagery, in the production of history and art history. Topics
for discussion include: the art and visual cultures of science and medicine, images of health, disease and disability, medical and scientific collections, portraiture and self-portraiture. Questions around ethical looking, art as evidence, working interdisciplinarily
to produce new knowledges about the past, the use of art in history and the use of history in art, and the challenges and rewards of archival research will be addressed.
Participants will be required to bring a piece of writing or a work of art to the masterclass for discussion and workshopping.
This event is free and fully catered, but spaces are limited. If you wish to attend, please send a brief summary of your research project (500 words), along with a short
biography (200 words) to keren.ham...@anu.edu.au.
The deadline for applications is 1 April 2024.
Grants of up to $500 are available for interstate participants to help circumvent travel costs. If you wish to be considered for a grant, please indicate this in your application,
along with a brief statement explaining how the funds would be used.
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International Congress of History of Science and Technology 2025 (Dunedin and online):
Call for Symposia now open
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Symposia proposal deadline:
1 April 2024
Call for stand alone papers opens 1 April 2024
Congress: 29 June - 5 July, 2025
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The International Congress of History of Science and Technology is
held every four years. The 27th Congress will be held as a hybrid in-person and online event at the University of Otago’s Dunedin campus in June-July 2025. Delegates registered for virtual participation will be able to both present and attend online. The Congress
will bring together a diverse group of the world’s leading scholars and students in the fields of history of science, technology, and medicine as well as related disciplines. It will be the first time the Congress has been held in Australasia and only the
second time in the Southern Hemisphere.
The call for symposia is now open. The theme of the 27th ICHST is “Peoples, Places, Exchanges, and Circulation." Symposia submissions are invited on any topic in the history of science, technology and medicine, but proposals that address aspects of the conference
theme, across all periods, and from a variety of methodological and historiographical approaches are especially encouraged.
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