PSA Around the World CFP

Philosophy of Science Association Logo

Sunday 5th November 2023;
Saturday 11th November 2023;
Friday 17th November 2023
Online via ZOOM

Call for Papers

The Philosophy of Science Association is delighted to launch a new initiative called PSA Around the World. The aim of the initiative is to reach out to the global community of philosophers of science and spotlight the rich diversity of practices and traditions in the field of philosophy of science via fully online conferences with a dedicated regional focus, running in the years when the Biennial Meeting of the PSA does not take place.

Our inaugural PSA 2023 Around the World has a focus on East Asia including South East Asia.

The conference will run fully online on ZOOM for three days and in different time slots to accommodate a global audience on various time zones: Sunday 5th November 2023; Saturday 11th November 2023; Friday 17th November 2023 (precise timing for each day TBA).

Contributed papers may be on any topic in philosophy of science and the conference is open to all PSA members worldwide. Given the time zones constraints, and with an eye to increasing diversity of topics, we regret that there is no call for symposia for this conference.

The PSA 2023 Around the World Committee is committed to assembling a program with high-quality papers on a variety of topics and diverse presenters that reflect the full range of current work in the philosophy of science. Scholars working in East Asia are particularly encouraged to submit papers, and papers exploring the philosophy of science in East Asian contexts are most welcome.

Submissions should consist of a 1000 word abstract and should be prepared for anonymous review with no information identifying the author in the body of the abstract. For co-authored papers, the presenting author should upload the abstract. Abstracts should be submitted using the conference EasyChair link: https://easychair.org/cfp/PSA_2023_Around_the_World

The deadline for submissions is 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time on 31 March 2023.

The Program Committee expects to announce its decision on papers accepted for presentation by the end of June 2023. Authors of accepted abstracts are encouraged to post full-length papers as PSA 2023 Around the World Conference Papers at philsci-archive.pitt.edu (a publicly accessible digital archive) prior to the meeting if they wish to do so. Paper presentation at the conference should take no more than 15 minutes to allow 15 min for questions (30 min time slot per paper).

In accordance with current PSA policy, no one is permitted to present more than once at each PSA meeting. A scholar may appear as co-author on more than one paper but may present only once at PSA 2023 Around the World.

General questions about contributed papers should be directed to the Chair of the PSA 2023 Around the World Program Committee, Michela Massimi, at michela.massimi@ed.ac.uk. To maintain anonymity in the review process, questions about specific submissions should be sent to office@philsci.org, as this address will be monitored by someone not involved in the review process.

Linda Hall Library Fellowships

The Linda Hall Library is now accepting applications for its 2023-24 fellowship program. These fellowships provide graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and independent scholars in the history of science and related humanities fields with financial support to explore the Library’s outstanding science and engineering collections. Fellows also participate in a dynamic intellectual community alongside in-house experts and scholars from other Kansas City cultural and educational institutions.

The Linda Hall Library holds nearly half a million monographs and more than 43,000 journal titles documenting the history of science and technology from the 15th century to the present. Its collections are exceptionally strong in the engineering disciplines, chemistry, and physics. In addition, the Library boasts extensive resources related to natural history, astronomy, earth science, environmental studies, aeronautics, life science, infrastructure studies, mathematics, and the history of the book.

The Library will once again be offering residential fellowships to support on-site research in Kansas City, as well as virtual fellowships for scholars working remotely using resources from the Library’s digital collections. In either case, applicants may request up to four months of funding at a rate of $3,000 per month for doctoral students and $4,200 per month for postdoctoral researchers.

The Library is also offering several fellowships intended for specific groups of researchers, including:

  • The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Postdoctoral Fellowship, which provides nine months of residential funding ($5,000 per month) to a postdoctoral scholar whose research explores the intersection of science and the humanities
  • The History of Science and Medicine Fellowship, offered in partnership with the Clendening History of Medicine Library at the University of Kansas Medical Center, which provides one month of residential funding ($3,000 per month) to a doctoral student whose research examines the intersecting histories of science and medicine
  • The Pearson Fellowship in Aerospace History, which provides up to two months of residential funding ($4,200 per month) to a postdoctoral scholar studying any aspect of aerospace history
  • The Presidential Fellowship in Bibliography, which provides up to four months of residential funding ($4,200 per month) to a postdoctoral scholar whose research focuses on the study of books and manuscripts as physical artifacts
  • The Ukraine Fellowship, offered in partnership with the UK-Ukraine Twinning Initiative, which provides up to two months of virtual funding ($5,000 per month) to a Ukrainian doctoral student or postdoctoral scholar whose research would benefit from the Library’s holdings.

The Linda Hall Library is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive research environment and encourages members of any groups that have traditionally been underrepresented in academia to apply for fellowship support.

Please share this announcement with graduate students, colleagues, or anyone else who might be interested in the Linda Hall Library’s fellowship program. All application materials are due no later than January 20, 2023. For further information, visit the Fellowships page on our website or e-mail fellowships@lindahall.org.

Due date 20 January, 2023

Two HPSSS Jobs

Florida Tech logo

History of Science Faculty position, Florida Institute of Technology

Florida Tech invites applications for a tenure track faculty position in the history of science and/or medicine, to begin in August 2023. Preference will be given to candidates with an area of specialization in the modern period with at least two years of teaching experience at the university level who can (a) teach undergraduate courses in the history of science, medicine, and technology (ancient, medieval, and modern); (b) develop undergraduate courses in their area of specialization; (c) contribute to the teaching of the general education humanities core curriculum; (d) develop courses that contribute to building bridges between the School of Arts and Communication and the College of Engineering and Science. All candidates must have a Ph.D. at the time of appointment. The School of Arts and Communication is part of the College of Psychology and Liberal Arts at Florida Tech. We are a small, collegial faculty committed to developing the liberal arts within a STEM university.

At Florida Tech, we believe in recruiting and retaining a diverse faculty and staff. We are committed to building an inclusive community that will make the university stronger. To achieve and sustain educational excellence, we seek to hire talented faculty and staff across the intersections of diverse races, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities, ages, socio-economic backgrounds, cultures, and national origins.

Florida Tech (fit.edu) is a private university ranked as a Tier 1 National University by U.S. News and World Report, and one of the top 20 small universities in the world by Times Higher Education. The university is in Melbourne, Brevard County, Florida, which is one of the top counties in the U.S. for high-tech employment and is near the NASA/Kennedy Space Center. The campus is six kilometers from the Indian River lagoon, one of the most biodiverse estuaries in the northern hemisphere and home to more than 4,300 species of plants and animals.

Applicants should submit their letter of application and curriculum vitae directly to the search committee chair, Gordon Patterson, at patterso@fit.edu with the Subject Line “History of Science Application”. The search committee encourages applicants to integrate their thinking and experiences regarding diversity into their application letter.

Review of applications will begin November 15, 2022 and continue until the position is filled.

For full details, see: floridatech.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com


Lectureship, HPS, Cambridge

The Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge invites applications for the Department's Lipton Lectureship, a permanent Assistant Professorship (with opportunity for promotion). The position is offered in the History of Recent Science, Technology, and Medicine, to start on 1 October 2023 or as soon as possible thereafter. Responsibilities will include contributing to all aspects of undergraduate and graduate teaching, assessing graduate applications and student funding applications, supervising, examining, leading research activities in the history of recent science, technology, and/or medicine, and various administrative duties for the Department. By 'recent', we generally refer to the period following 1945, with the understanding that periodization varies by historical specialty. The Department welcomes applications from scholars across the full range of specializations, including those whose work considers the diverse range of contexts outside Europe and North America, as well as Indigenous knowledge traditions across the world.

Applicants must hold a PhD (or equivalent) and have an outstanding record of excellence in teaching, research, and publication in the history of recent science, technology, and/or medicine. An ability to work in science and technology studies is desirable. The Department offers an exceptionally stimulating and supportive interdisciplinary research environment and the opportunity to develop undergraduate and graduate teaching in the post-holder's areas of expertise. The closing date for receipt of applications is 27 November 2022.

To see further particulars and apply online, go to: jobs.cam.ac.uk

For information on the Department of History and Philosophy of Science see www.hps.cam.ac.uk; for more on the University of Cambridge see cam.ac.uk.

Please quote reference JN33811 on your application and in any correspondence about this vacancy.

The University actively supports equality, diversity and inclusion and encourages applications from all sections of society.

Dyason Lecture 2022: Peter Godfrey-Smith

The Evolution of Sentience

Thursday 13 October at 6:00pm to 7:30pm

Friends Room in the Mitchell Building, State Library of New South Wales

1 Shakespeare Place, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

In the 2022 Dyason Lecture presented by the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science, Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith considers the evolution of sentience.

How did evolution give rise to feelings, such as pleasure and pain? And which organisms experience the events of their lives in this way? Do insects feel pain? Octopuses? How about plants? Where might we locate the true limits of sentience?

Bookings are essential. Bookings can be made on the State Library event page.

Download the flyer

Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith

Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith is a professor in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Sydney, and he has a PhD in philosophy from UC San Diego. He taught at Stanford University between 1991 and 2003, and then combined a half-time post at the Australian National University and a visiting position at Harvard for a few years. He moved to Harvard full-time and was Professor there from 2006 to 2011, before moving to the CUNY Graduate Center. Since 2015 he has also had a half-time position in the HPS Unit at the University of Sydney.

Peter’s main research interests are in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of mind. He also works on pragmatism (especially John Dewey), general philosophy of science, and some parts of metaphysics and epistemology. Peter has written six books: Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature, Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, which won the 2010 Lakatos Award, Philosophy of Biology, Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, and Metazoa: Animal Life and the Both of the Mind. Peter’s photos and videos have appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, The Guardian, Science, The Boston Globe and elsewhere.