SHOT Elections 2018 – Vote now
SHOT-ELECTIONS 2018
Vote online until October 10 via the ONLINE BALLOT.
This year’s ballot includes candidates for the Executive Council, Vice President (President Elect), Treasurer, Nominating Committee, and Editorial Committee.
- The Executive Council is SHOT’s governing board and works with the Society’s officers to plan and set policy. Members of the Council serve for three years.
- The Vice President/President Elect shall perform all of the duties of the President in the event of the absence or disability of the President, shall assist the President when called upon, and shall have such other duties and powers as may be assigned to or vested in such office by the Executive Council or by the Members. The Vice President/President Elect’s term of office shall be two years, and normally on the expiration of that term he/she shall become President.
- The Treasurer shall collect dues and other moneys received by the Society, keep records of the dues status of each Member, deposit the funds of the Society, make all proper disbursements of the Society’s funds, keep adequate and correct records of the Society’s business transactions, and have such other duties and powers as may be assigned to or vested in such office by the Executive Council or by the Members. The first term in office is 2 years.
- The Nominating Committee is responsible for selecting individuals to run for office and preparing the slate of candidates for each year’s election. Members of the Nominating Committee serve for three years
- The Editorial Committee works with the editor of Technology and Culture in addressing questions relating to the operation of the journal. Members of the Editorial Committee serve for five years.
CANDIDATES FOR THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
Anna Åberg: I hold a position as assistant professor in the history of science and technology at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. I defended my PhD thesis at the Division for the History of Science, Technology and Environment at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. My thesis, explores the role of natural gas in late 20th century Sweden. I spent one year as a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Russian and Caucasian studies in Paris, before moving back to Sweden to start my position in Gothenburg. International cooperation and networking have been central to me in my education and scholarly work. I hold diplomas from universities in Sweden, France and Russia, and my research typically includes transnational and comparative perspectives. My current projects explore science diplomacy in nuclear fusion research, Swedish uranium import, and gender in sports history. I was introduced to SHOT by my advisor, Arne Kaijser, and attended my first SHOT conference in Lisbon 2008. Since then, I have been a frequent member and participant in the annual meetings. I have served on the Brooks Hindle postdoctoral award jury, and as a jury-member for the 3-minute-dissertation contest. In 2011 I was part of a group that founded the EDITH (Exploring Diversity in Technology History) SIG, and I have also been a member of WITH and Envirotech.
I am honored to be considered as a candidate for SHOT’s Executive Council. In addition to my engagement in SHOT, I am a long-time member of the European network for historians of technology, Tensions of Europe (ToE), and, if elected, I would strive to continue strenghtening the relation between the two networks. I was one of the founders of the ToE Early Career Scholars group and have since been engaged in the concerns facing PhD-students in their transition phase to new roles within or outside of academia. The SHOT community has been central to my own academic and intellectual development and I hope to be able to “pay this forward” to other young scholars. Currently, I am preoccupied by issues of integrating gender and historical perspectives in the engineering education at Chalmers, and I believe that SHOT has an important role to play as a forum for discussions about teaching and education. Finally, since I became a member of SHOT, and especially since the foundation of EDITH, I have enjoyed following the development of the organisation regarding issues of diversity, inclusion and internationalisation. If elected, contributing to this continued discussion would be one of my main objectives.
Yulia Frumer: I am a historian of Japanese technology, currently holding the Bo Jung and Soon Young Kim chair of East Asian Science and Technology in Johns Hopkins’ History of Science and Technology Department. Born in Tallinn, Estonia, I grew up in Tel Aviv, and finished my first MA at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Sciences and Ideas before embarking on research in Japan, which subsequently let me to pursue a Ph.D in history of science at Princeton.
Having experienced the benefits of cross-cultural perspectives in research I seek the further internationalization at SHOT—both in the range of topics and in scholars’ backgrounds—a goal to which I have already contributed as a member of the Internationalization Committee. My present project focuses on the long history of humanoid robotics in Japan. Previously, I explored the evolution of Japanese timekeeping technologies prior to the Meiji period. Having shifted my research focus to the 20th century after initially training as an early modernist, I recognize the benefits of exploring technological communities that are temporally and geographically diverse, and would encourage further inclusion in the society of scholars working on technologies in diverse periods and geographical regions.
Edward Jones-Imhotep: I completed my PhD in History of Science at Harvard University and I am currently Associate Professor of History at York University in Toronto. My research focuses on the cultural history of failing machines. I’m particularly interested in what machine failures reveal about the historical interrelations between technologies, social orders and the self in Modern Europe and North America. From 2009-13, I served as Associate Director of York’s Institute for Science and Technology Studies (iSTS). I am also a co-founder of Toronto’s TechnoScience Salon, a public forum for humanities-based discussions about science and technology. My recent book, The Unreliable Nation: Hostile Nature and Technological Failure in the Cold War (MIT Press, 2017), explored how technological failures shaped cold-war conceptions of nature and nationhood. My current book project—Reliable Humans, Trustworthy Machines—investigates how people from the late-18th to the mid-20th centuries saw machine failures as a problem of the self: a problem of the kinds of people that failing machines created, threatened, or presupposed.
It is an honor to stand for election to SHOT’s Executive Council. The Society and its members have supported me as a scholar from the beginning of my career. Last year, they gave me the enormous honor of the Society’s Abbot Payson Usher Prize. I want to repay that ongoing support and mentorship by continuing to make SHOT a vibrant and supportive intellectual community for emerging and established scholars alike. I’m eager to work with other members of the Executive to create new initiatives that strengthen our discipline’s connections and contributions, not just to cognate fields and to history writ large, but also to pressing contemporary conversations. My experience in building and sustaining critical discussions about technology across disciplines, institutions, and publics has taught me again and again just how eager audiences are for the surprising and hard-won insights of our discipline. I believe SHOT has a vital role to play in fostering, challenging and refining those insights. At a time of both profound interest and deep anxieties about technology, SHOT promises an energetic and dedicated community of scholars helping us all to think, write and talk more critically and carefully about the social life of technologies. As a member of the Executive, I see my task as helping to build and sustain that community and to nurture and promote its incredibly important work.
Aleksandra Kobiljski is Associate Research Professor at the French National Research Center (CNRS). Her current project is on the envirotech history of steel-making in Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She received her Ph.D in History from the City University of New York (Graduate Center) in 2010. She has since taught history of science and technology in modern East Asia at Harvard University before moving back to Europe in 2011. An enthusiastic SHOT member since 2010, she has not missed an annual meeting since Dearborn in 2014. She has attended Executive Council meetings, participated as a presenter, discussant, and panel organizer, contributed to SHOT business as a member of Prometheans and by serving on the Sites Committee. She has appreciated the association’s openness to international members and the resulting methodological and institutional diversity. Having been trained in the US, working in France and doing research on Japan, she appreciates SHOT as a place of exciting intellectual conversations which stimulate and nurture her research agenda.
If elected to SHOT’s Executive Council, she would seek to be a Maintainer, by which she means putting energy and time into sustaining ongoing projects and initiatives of the society. In her activities with the Executive Council, she would draw upon her background in research, teaching and service as well as on her international training and network to continue to develop scholarly connections with Europe and Japan. As a member of the editorial team of Artefact, francophone journal of record for the history of technology, she would also seek to strengthen ties between these two communities.
Eden Medina: I am a historian of technology, computing, and Latin America. My research looks at the relationship of technology and politics, including the relationship of technology to processes of political change and the ways that political values shape the design of technological systems. I am the author of Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile and the coeditor of Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology and Society in Latin America. I am an associate professor of informatics in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University, Bloomington. I also hold affiliations with the Indiana University Maurer School of Law and the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, and serve on the editorial board of Hispanic American Historical Review.
I have been a member of SHOT since 2001. During that time I have chaired the committees for the Bernard S. Finn Prize IEEE History Prize, the IEEE Life Members’ Prize in Electrical History, and the international scholar program. I have also served twice on the committee that awards the Leonardo da Vinci Medal. I came to the history of technology from the field of electrical engineering because I wanted to understand how politics, power, and context shape the kinds of technological systems I had previously been trained to build. Since then I have worked to broaden the geography of the history of technology and promote within the field histories of Latin American peoples, communities, and nations. If elected, I will also work to bridge the academic work taking place in the SHOT community and the conversations taking place in other fields, including Latin American studies, STS, and sociolegal studies, as well as such technical fields as engineering and computer science. Like many members of SHOT, I move in multiple academic communities. However, I consider the history of technology to be my academic home and would welcome the opportunity to give back to the SHOT community by serving on the executive council.
María M. Portuondo: I am Associate Professor and Chair at the Department of History of Science and Technology at The Johns Hopkins University. I have especial interest in the development and transfer of scientific and technological knowledge in Spain and Latin America. Over the last twelve years I have taught graduate and undergraduate courses on technological development in Latin American. My book Secret Science: Spanish Cosmography and the New World (Chicago, 2009) was awarded the J. E. Fagg Prize by the AHA. Her next book, The Spanish Disquiet: The Biblical Natural Philosophy of Benito Arias Montano will appear in early 2019. I am the author of numerous articles and book chapters, including “Plantation Factories: Science and Technology in Late-Eighteenth-Century Cuba,”Technology and Culture 44, no. 2 (2003): 231-257.
Jeff Schramm: I am an Associate Professor in the History and Political Science department at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Missouri. An Illinois native, I am an alumnus of Missouri S&T, having received a BA in History in 1992. I earned my MA and PhD from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1995 and 2003 where I studied with John Smith, Steve Cutcliffe and Gail Cooper, among others. All were instrumental in encouraging me to be an active member of SHOT. The first meeting I attended was in Washington, DC in 1993. I served on the SHOT sites committee and am helping to organize the St. Louis meeting together with Amy Bix and Jeff Manuel. I teach undergraduate courses on the history of technology, history of modern architecture, and the US survey. I have been recognized for exceptional teaching with several teaching awards including a Missouri S&T Faculty Teaching Award and multiple Outstanding Teaching Awards. My first book, Out of Steam: Dieselization and American Railroads, 1920-1960, was published in 2010. I’m currently deep into manuscript writing on a history of the United States Bureau of Mines. I am an advisor for several undergraduate student organizations including the St. Pats board and KMNR 89.7fm, the student radio station. Occasionally I even take over the airways as a DJ.
It is an honor to be considered for the Executive Committee. SHOT has been an intellectual home for me for 25 years. It has been and continues to be instrumental in shaping the scholar, and teacher, that I’ve become. The many fine papers presented at the meeting, together with the excellent articles in Technology & Culture and even informal conversations in the hallways and over meals inspire and educate me and directly influence not only my scholarship but my undergraduate teaching. But beyond the intellectual, SHOT has been an important social experience for me and I look forward fondly to the annual meetings to reconnect with old friends and make new ones. I was welcomed into SHOT as a grad student and try to continue to welcome scholars of all types into our organization. I have no agenda other than continuing and improving on the great work that SHOT has done, especially in welcoming new scholars, improving public engagement, and enhancing the teaching, broadly conceived, of the history of technology. Thank you for considering me for the SHOT Executive Committee.
Vice President / President Elect
Greg Clancey: I’m running for Vice President because SHOT is a uniquely welcoming society, one that’s been consistently good to me and many others, and I want it give back and help us flourish. In particular I want us to remain relevant to a new generation with changing attitudes toward ‘technology’. I’ve been involved with the Society since I was a graduate student in the MIT STS Program in the early 1990s, and have served on the Executive Council, chaired the Nominating Committee, and chaired the Local Organizing Committee for the 2016 annual conference in Singapore, where I’ve lived and worked for 19 years. I think I’m in a good position to help further SHOT’s transition to becoming a truly global organization. I’ve maintained close connections in the US (where I’m from), have lived and worked in Europe (and have many colleagues there), and have extensive experience in Asia and Australasia. As the leader of an STS research cluster I’m used to working with colleagues from many disciplines, and I’ d want to make SHOT even more welcoming to diverse perspectives, recognizing that history remains our raison d’etre. I’ve also been involved in policy work, most recently involving the Fukushima nuclear accident, and think historians of technology have much more to say to policy-makers. My research interests are diverse, ranging from carpentry to medicine/health to natural disaster and climate change, so I’m not a partisan of any one technology or approach and would be curious about and supportive of the work of all the SHOT special interest groups. I’m also at the point in my career when I can devote the time that the role of Vice President demands, and have institutional resources I can draw on to further raise the Society’s profile in my half of the world. In a period of rising nationalisms, international societies are all the more important in building and sustaining networks across borders. I’m a pretty good networker, and would devote a large amount of my time to growing our membership around the world, particularly among younger scholars, and keeping SHOT relevant to the scholarly projects and concerns of the current century. If elected, I promise to make SHOT my first priority and serve the Society with all my energy.
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of History, the Leader of the STS (Science, Technology, and Society) Cluster at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), and Master of Tembusu College, all at the National University of Singapore (NUS). I formerly served NUS as Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and Chairman of the General Education Steering Committee. I received his PhD in the Historical and Social Study of Science and Technology from MIT. My research centers on the cultural history of technology, particularly in modern Japan and East Asia. My book Earthquake Nation: The Cultural Politics of Japanese Seismicity (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 2006) won SHOT’s Sidney Edelstein Prize in 2007, and was selected as one of the “11 Best Books about Science” for the UC Berkeley Summer Reading List. I have also been awarded SHOT’s Samuel & Rose Levinson Prize, and the Joan Cahalin Robinson Prize. I am co-editor of Major Problems in the History of American Technology (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1998), Historical Perspectives on East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine (2002), and The City as Target (2011). I am a native of New England and lived my early life in Maine and Massachusetts, where I had a prior career as an architectural conservator.
Arwen Mohun – It has been more than thirty years since I attended my first SHOT meeting. Since then, the Society and its members have provided me with friendship, mentoring, and continued intellectual challenge and inspiration. It is therefore a great honor to be nominated to stand for election for the Vice Presidency of SHOT. This is an opportunity help ensure succeeding generations will also benefit from being part of the SHOT community.
The nomination is well-timed. I am just finishing a five-year term as History Department chair at the University of Delaware. Participating in university administration has taught me a number of skills—social, financial, and organizational—that are useful in leading a professional society. Other relevant faculty experience includes mentoring doctoral students, many of whom had their first paper-giving experience at SHOT and some of whom now have their own students. As a consequence, I am acutely aware of the professional challenges facing today’s students and the important role the Society can play in helping them to succeed. I have also served SHOT in a number of capacities, including chairing the Women in Technology History SIG and serving on the Executive Committee.
Like many SHOT members, I deeply value the Society’s welcoming culture and willingness to include to the perspectives of scholars and practitioners from many disciplines, geographies, and identities. As VP and, eventually, President, I would work to foster that culture in forms appropriate for our own times. I also feel strongly that STS scholars need to do a better job of communicating the relevance of our research to both the general public and technological practitioners. My experience at Delaware teaching public engagement skills through the Delaware Public Humanities Institute and Museum Studies program would complement the steps SHOT has already taken in this direction.
Treasurer
Amy Bix is professor of history at Iowa State University and director of ISU’s Center for the Historical Studies of Technology and Science. She served as SHOT secretary for five years in the early 2000s, handling organization operations and the management of annual meetings, including the fiftieth-anniversary celebrations. Bix has also served on the SHOT Executive
Council, the SHOT Finance Committee, and a number of other SHOT administrative and awards committees. Bix researches a variety of topics in the history of technology; her latest book, Girls Coming to Tech: A History of American Engineering Education for Women, won 2015’s Margaret Rossiter Prize from the History of Science Society. Her current book project analyzes the history behind today’s large and influential STEM movement for K-12 girls.
Nominations Committee
Gerardo Con Diaz: I am an assistant professor of science and technology studies at the University of California, Davis. My first book, a history of software patenting in the United States, will be published by Yale University Press in 2019. Work in this manuscript has been awarded SHOT’s Finn, Hindle, and Levinson Prizes, as well as fellowships and prizes from the IEEE, the Business History Conference, the Lemelson Center, and the Charles Babbage Institute. At UC Davis, I teach courses on the legal history of biology and medicine, the global history and theory of digital technology, and industrial change since the 19th century. Born and raised in Costa Rica, I received a PhD in history of science and medicine in 2016.
Serving on the Nominating Committee would allow me to bring to SHOT the passion for professional service that I have developed over the years. I serve on the Finance Committee at the History of Science Society and on the Executive Board for SIGCIS, where I am Treasurer. I am also the Associate Editor for Technology’s Stories, SHOT’s open source online journal. This history of service has made me very familiar with the inner workings of academic associations, and it has taught me that identifying potential new leaders is crucial to the continued health and vibrancy of our community. Finding these new leaders requires us to think very carefully on who we are and where we come from, what brings us together, and what hopes we have for SHOT’s future. As a result, my key priorities as a member of the Nominating Committee will be to get to know our community as well as I can, reflect on what I learn from all of you, and identify potential leaders who can meet our rapidly changing and increasingly global needs.
Ben Gross: I am Vice President for Research and Scholarship at the Linda Hall Library—the world’s foremost independent research library devoted to engineering, science, technology, and their histories. In that role, I currently oversee the library’s collections, reference staff, and fellowship program. My scholarship focuses on the consumer electronics industry, with a particular emphasis on the internal dynamics of corporate R&D. My first book, The TVs of Tomorrow: How RCA’s Flat-Screen Dreams Led to the First LCDs, was published earlier this year by the University of Chicago Press. Before moving to Kansas City, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, where I contributed to a variety of research projects exploring the history of materials science.
It would be an honor to serve on SHOT’s Nominating Committee. Participation in SHOT has been a central part of my professional development since graduate school and this new role would be an excellent opportunity to support the society’s long-term growth. My involvement with the Dibner and Robinson Prize Committees and numerous SHOT special interest groups—including the Jovians, Mercurians, Prometheans, SIGCIS, and TEMSIG—has prepared me to effectively identify candidates for leadership positions from within the organization. At the same time, the connections I have established through the Linda Hall Library and Chemical Heritage Foundation’s fellowship programs, as well as my active presence on social media, should facilitate the recruitment of new talent. I look forward to working with the rest of the Nominating Committee to ensure that SHOT’s future leaders reflect the dynamism and diversity of its membership.
Editorial Committee
Natalia Nikiforova: I am an Associate Professor at the Peter the Great Saint-Petersburg Polytechnic University of Russia. I got my Masters’ degree in linguistics and translation studies in 2008. In 2011 I defended my PhD thesis entitled “The Concept of ‘Technology’ in Cultural Researches of the Twentieth Century” at the State Pedagogical University of Russia, Saint-Petersburg. I have been working in Academia since 2009, my first workplace was the National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics (Saint-Petersburg, Russia).
My research interests include cultural history of technology, science and technology studies, social history of science, cultural transfers, and history of concepts. My research projects have been supported by the British Council (2015), Russian Foundation for Basic Research (2015 – 2018). At Saint-Petersburg Polytechnic University I am an active leader of international activities and cultural events, being responsible for faculty international collaborations and visiting professorship program, and representing my university in international academic associations and events (World Cities World Class University (WC2) Network, G200 Youth Forum).
I collaborate with a Russian peer-reviewed journal (Society. Environment. Development (TERRA HUMANA) www.terrahumana.ru/index_e.htm), I have been invited as a reviewer to Russian and international journals, and I have experience in editing. I am aware of the landscape and trends in the fields of history of technology and science and technology studies in Russia and internationally. Thus, I believe that I have relevant expertise that will help me to facilitate efficient high-quality work of the journal Technology & Culture.
Prakash Kumar: I am Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies at Pennsylvania State University and a specialist of the history of South Asia, STS, and Development Studies. My interest lies in the agrarian and ecological history of colonial and postcolonial India. I am currently writing a book on the place of American modernization in agricultural and rural projects of development in India in the twentieth century, have a book under contract with Indiana University Press on GMOs and civil society resistance in contemporary India, and am the author of Indigo Plantations and Science in Colonial India (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
I am delighted to stand for election as a member of SHOT’s Editorial Committee. If elected, I would make an effort to bring analytics developed in the area studies to address mainstream concerns in the historiography of technology. My publications to date reflect this goal, whereas I have raised questions of technology in journals such as Modern Asian Studies, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Agricultural History, while also bringing nonwestern analytics and methodologies into the study of technology (Special South Asia volume in Technology and Culture, forthcoming). This primary commitment to broaden concerns within the field of history of technology will guide my effort in assisting the Society’s flagship journal and other SHOT publications.
2018 SHOT BALLOT
Vote online until October 10 via the ONLINE BALLOT.
Please note: Voting is open for SHOT Members only. Therefore we ask you to fill in your membership number and name. This information is only used to check whether you are allowed to vote. You can find your membership number in the renewal e-mail of JHUP and on the Technology and Culture address label. If you are not able to find your membership number please contact the SHOT secretariat.
Download the SHOT July Newsletter with all information.