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Envirotech Special Interest Group Travel Grant
The Envirotech Special Interest Group is pleased to announce the Joy Parr Travel Grant for the upcoming 2017 American Society for Environmental History conference. Eligibility for the award is limited to those presenting a paper addressing the interrelated histories of environment and technology at the ASEH meeting in Chicago March 29 - April 2, 2017. The grant is available to current graduate students, recent Ph.D.s (earned within three years), and independent scholars. The application is due by Wednesday, March 15, 2017. The winner will receive a check for $400 at the Envirotech breakfast meeting during the conference.
Applicants should complete the attached questionnaire and email it along with a one or two page C.V. to envirotechtravelaward@gmail.com. Any questions should be addressed to Kellen Backer and submitted by email to envirotechtravelaward@gmail.com.
Kellen Backer
Faculty Fellow in the Humanities
Syracuse University
kbacker@syr.edu
Workshop for the History of Environment, Agriculture, Technology & Science
WHEATS 2017: Workshop for the History of Environment, Agriculture, Technology & Science
https://wheats2017.wordpress.com/
October 13-15, 2017
University at Albany, History Department, Albany, NY
The University at Albany History Department is pleased to be hosting WHEATS in Fall 2017. The Workshop for the History of Environment, Agriculture, Technology, and Science (WHEATS) brings together graduate students studying the history of the environment, agriculture, science, or technology. WHEATS is open to submissions from any discipline with interests in these fields. Papers — generally 25-30 pages — are circulated in advance to all participants, and at the workshop papers receive feedback from participants and senior scholars through a roundtable discussion. This format is well suited for works in progress, and the workshop will have sessions on professional development as well as opportunities to meet and engage members of the broader academic community.
Due to logistical constraints, papers must be in English.
The University at Albany will provide housing, food, and some funding to help defray travel costs for participants.
Potential participants should submit a one-page abstract (200 words) and a short curriculum vitae by May 1, 2017. All submissions will be acknowledged by e-mail and applicants will be notified of acceptance by June 1, 2017. Applicants should note their year of graduate study or Ph.D. completion date. Accepted papers will be due September 10, 2017.
WHEATS 2017 is generously supported by the Agricultural History Society (AHS) and the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT).
For further information, contact:
Tinamarie Peabody tpeabody@albany.edu
or visit our website: https://wheats2017.wordpress.com/
Send submissions to: wheats@albany.edu
Seminar: Bias, random error, and the variety of evidence thesis
THE UNIT FOR HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Held in conjunction with the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science
SEMESTER one
RESEARCH SEMINAR SERIES
MONDAY 13th MARCH 2017
Barbara Osimani, PhD
Assistant Professor
Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Bias, random error, and the variety of evidence thesis.
In this talk I analyse the two main research strategies advocated by opposing schools in medical methodology (“evidence elitism” and “methodological pluralism”) and underscore their epistemological underpinnings, with a particular focus on the role of reliability and varied evidence in the two camps.
Since the latter strategy can be made more general by appealing to the Variety of Evidence Thesis, I analyse this thesis and its diverse versions, by delving in particular on the one presented by Bovens and Hartmann (2003), where the interaction of reliability and replication in hypothesis confirmation has an essential role in defining the epistemic value of varied evidence vs. replication.
I then present Claveau’s variation of this model (2013), which models unreliability as systematic error (bias), and go on to propose a model (Osimani, Landes forthcoming), where a distinction is made between random and systematic error. This delivers results that contrast with both Bovens and Hartmann (2003), and Claveau (2013): when evidence is highly biased relatively speaking (bias much larger than random error), then confirmation is greater for varied evidence. This is in conflict with Bovens and Hartmann results where the VET failed for unreliable evidence (in their sense of unreliability). Furthermore, when evidence is only weakly biased, then the model favors replication; and for low values of both kind of errors, the area where VET fails become negligible.
Although the VET fails in all models, it does so under different conditions in each of them, which are especially linked to how reliability, dependence of observations, and consistency are modeled. This demands for a further clarification of these notions both in scientific practice and in formal epistemology.
DATE: Monday 13th March 2017
TALK TIME: 5:30 PM
LOCATION- CCANESA MEETING ROOM, MADSEN BUILDING
CAMPERDOWN CAMPUS
Best access to CCANESA is from the Eastern Avenue entrance of the Madsen Building. When you enter you will be on the 3rd floor. Please proceed across the foyer and take the stairs on the right up one floor. The door to CCANESA will be straight ahead on this landing
All Welcome | No Booking Required | Free
PLEASE CHECK OUR WEBSITE FOR ANY CHANGES TO VENUE OR TIME
sydney.edu.au/science/hps/
Memorial Service for Homer Le Grand
Dear colleagues,
Last month the Monash community was very saddened to hear of the passing of Emeritus Professor Homer Le Grand. Professor Le Grand, whose tremendous contributions were touched upon in my email of 19 January, was Dean of our Faculty of Arts from 1999 to 2006, as well as Dean of Science in 1999 and 2000.
A memorial service for Professor Le Grand will be held on Friday 3 March at 1.30pm in the Monash University Religious Centre, Clayton Campus.
Refreshments will be available after the service, in the Monash Staff Club.
The family of Professor Le Grand have requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Homer Le Grand Student Assistance Scholarship scheme.
Information regarding campus parking and shuttle bus transport on the day of the service is set out below.
Regards,
Professor Margaret Gardner AO
President and Vice-Chancellor
Call for papers: History of Science in India Symposium, Canterbury University, Christchurch, New Zealand, April 19-20 2017
Dear Colleagues,
I'm delighted to announce the upcoming international symposium "History of Science in India" which will take place April 19-20th 2017, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand (see attached poster and url below).
http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/events/active/uc-events/history-of-science-in-india-international-symposium.html
The streams in this two-day event will include (but are not limited to) history of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and technology with three keynote speakers from India:
- Prof Ramasubramanian (IIT Bombay; history of mathematics),
- Prof Sriram (IIT Madras; history of astronomy), and
- Prof Rama Jayasundar (Cambridge educated medical surgeon at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi; history of Ayurvedic medicine).
Registration is free but essential. To register, or to send a title and abstract for consideration, please email me
by Friday March 17th.
Following the symposium, a 5-day workshop is planned which will mix emerging and experienced researchers to reflect on methodology in the History of Science in Sanskrit Sources, including manuscriptology, paleography, critical editing, translation issues, technical commentary writing, and digital humanities resources. Please email me to register your interest for this.
This symposium is supported by a generous grant from the New Zealand India Research Institute.
Race, Sex, and Reproduction in the Global South, c.1800–2000
An international workshop at the University of Sydney, 18-19 April 2017
Conveners: Warwick Anderson (Sydney), Chiara Beccalossi (Lincoln), Hans Pols (Sydney)
Sponsored by Race and Ethnicity in the Global South, an ARC Laureate Research Program, and the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science
Biomedical scientists grew preoccupied with the size of the population and patterns of reproduction at the beginning of the nineteenth century. By its close, sexology, a science devoted to the study of human sexual behavior, emerged, and at the beginning of the twentieth century the eugenics movement advocated active social engineering and state intervention in citizens’ reproductive sexuality. This medical attention to reproduction and sexual behaviour has been closely intertwined with interest in evolutionary theories, the improvement of hereditary traits and racial differences. Scientific and pseudo-scientific inquiries into race and sexuality increasingly informed national policies in the modern period. The medical and scientific knowledge on race and sexuality has moved across countries and continents to become global through processes of translation, hybridisation and transculturation. However, historical accounts of how science and medicine have shaped modern ideas of race and sexuality in a global context often refer only to developments in the Global North. Recent histories of the Global South have shown that debates on race and reproduction in the southern hemisphere have their own history. Biomedical scientists in the southern hemisphere, for instance, showed greater interest in racial plasticity, environmental adaptation, mixing or miscegenation, and blurring of racial boundaries; sexologists in the Global South were more likely to cross disciplinary boundaries, incorporating criminal anthropology, psychiatry, biology, endocrinology and psychoanalysis in their studies until well into the 1970s.
Keynote speakers: Alison Bashford (Cambridge), Margaret Jolly (ANU)
Presenters: Ellen Amster (McMaster), Chiara Beccalossi (Lincoln), Shrikant Botre (Warwick), Nicole Bourbonnais (Graduate Institute Geneva), Eve Buckley (Delaware), Sarah Ferber (Wollongong), Vera Mackie (Wollongong), Daksha Parmar (Jawaharlal Nehru), Yolana Pringle (Cambridge), Lisa Todd (New Brunswick), Rebecca Williams (Exeter)
The workshop is free, but limited places are available. Registration necessary by 4 April 2017. Contact:
Dr James Dunk E james.dunk@sydney.edu.au T +61 2 9351 2809
More information here.
ANZSHM 15th Biennial Conference – Health, Medicine, and Society: Challenge and Change
Notification and Call for Papers for the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine’s 15th Biennial Conference, in Melbourne, July 2017.
We feel that postgraduate students in health sciences and history may be interested in attending. Travel grants are available to PG students via a competitive process. There’s also a prize for the best paper by a student.
Abstract submissions close on Feb 20. Expression of interest may be made via the conference website (weblink below). Feel free to circulate the notices to anyone you think may be interested in attending.
Many thanks
Madonna Grehan
ANZSHM 15th Biennial Conference - Health, Medicine, and Society: Challenge and Change
11-14 July 2017, Witness Seminar 15 July | ACU Melbourne (Fitzroy Campus)
https://dcconferences.eventsair.com/anzshm2017/csn
Tel: +61 3 9484 8076 | Mob: 0428 220 520