We invite papers investigating datadriven techniques in academic research and analytic industries and the consequences of implementing datadriven products and processes. Papers utilizing computational methods or ethnography with theorization of technology, social power, or politics are encouraged.
Convenors: Dr Charlotte Mazel‐Cabasse (University of California, Berkeley); Dr Stuart Geiger (UC‐ Berkeley); Dr Laura Noren (New York University); Dr Gretchen Gano (University of California Berkeley); Dr Brittany Fiore‐Gartland (University of Washington); Prof Massimo Mazzotti (University of California, Berkeley)
2016 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Study of Science
Science & technology by other means: Exploring collectives, spaces and futures
The joint 2016 4S/EASST conference in Barcelona is an opportunity to share reflections, ideas, findings and projects on a variety of aspects characterizing these alternative ways to do science and technology: (a) such as the fact that all of these transformations usually take place in blurred everyday spaces and not in those enclosed established spaces for science and technology development, such as laboratories or industrial R&D departments; (b) or, in a similar way, the fact that research and innovation processes are increasingly organised in networked, horizontal assemblages where the traditional hierarchies in science are put into question and where science and technology are being co‐produced by different actors in different, sometimes antagonistic, ways; (c) and, finally, the fact that traditional boundaries between the public and the private are no longer confined to state and for‐profit actors, care practices taking a preeminent presence in most of these everyday situations.
Speaker(s)
R. Stuart Geiger
Former BIDS Ethnographer Stuart Geiger is now a faculty member at the University of California, San Diego, jointly appointed in the Department of Communication and the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute. At BIDS, as an ethnographer of science and technology, he studied the infrastructures and institutions that support the production of knowledge. He launched the Best Practices in Data Science discussion group in 2019, having been one of the original members of the MSDSE Data Science Studies Working Group. Previously, his work on Wikipedia focused on the community of volunteer editors who produce and maintain an open encyclopedia. He also studied distributed scientific research networks and projects, including the Long-Term Ecological Research Network and the Open Science Grid. In Wikipedia and scientific research, he studied topics including newcomer socialization, community governance, specialization and professionalization, quality control and verification, cooperation and conflict, the roles of support staff and technicians, and diversity and inclusion. And, as these communities are made possible through software systems, he studied how the design of software tools and systems intersect with all of these issues. He received an undergraduate degree at UT Austin, and an MA in Communication, Culture, and Technology at Georgetown University, where he began empirically studying communities using qualitative and ethnographic methods. As part of receiving his PhD from the UC Berkeley School of Information, he worked with anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, historians, organizational and management scholars, designers, and computer scientists.
Charlotte Cabasse
Charlotte Cabasse-Mazel is now the Executive Director of the Digital Humanities Center, jointly launched by the University of Lausanne (UniL) and the Polytechnical School of Lausanne (EPFL).
Charlotte Cabasse-Mazel holds a PhD in Geography and Science and Technologies Studies from the University of Paris-Est, where she studied at the Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés (LATTS), at Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. She is interested in the ways in which practices and methodologies of data science transform production of knowledge and interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as scientific personae and trajectories within the academic institution.
Her PhD research focused on the creation of hybrid communities and the transformation of subjects (both resident/expert) and space, facing risk of natural disasters in the Bay Area of San Francisco. Previously researcher at EPFL, Switzerland, she worked on research projects questioning the definition of “science”, “society”, “future” and “risk”. She also participated to join research-action project with UN Agencies (ISRD, WHO) in Madagascar.
Before going back to graduate school, she was a civil servant in French Embassy in South Africa and an NGO project coordinator for Aide Médicale Internationale (AMI) in Afghanistan and Indonesia. She also worked as a web and freelance journalist, having collaborated with French local and national newspapers.
She received her MA in Cultural Geography from Université de Reims, France; and MA and BA in Information and Communications Sciences from Université de la Sorbonne, Paris, France.