2017 Conference

AAHPSSS 2017 CONFERENCE

McKinnon Building, University of Wollongong

22–24 November 2017

2017 Conference

The Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science 2017 Conference took place 22–24 November at UOW. The conference was the biggest AAHPSSS has seen for many years, with more than 70 delegates, presenting papers in up to three parallel sessions over the three days.

The conference was a great success, with many people commenting on the exciting papers they saw and the variety of topics covered. Highlights included the keynote Dyason lecture by Professor Emma Kowal, the indigenous knowledges theme that ran through the whole conference, the diversity of history of science papers, the quality of the graduate papers and their broader involvement, and the new connections that were forged throughout.

The Emerging Issues in Science and Society sessions also went extremely well and brought together emerging and established scholars from the sciences and the humanities/social sciences to explore important contemporary topics and open up public conversations around them. We’re already planning another Emerging Issues event with the Australian Academy of Sciences for 2018.

This year’s Ian Langham prize for best graduate paper went to Eden Smith (University of Melbourne), for her presentation on:  ‘Using concepts as experimental tools: Mental imagery and hallucinations’.

In 2018, we plan to hold the Dyason Lecture in conjunction with the Society for Social Studies of Science Conference (at the Sydney Convention Centre – see more information here: https://4s2018sydney.org/), and will organise a full conference for 2019. We’ll be working towards even more philosophy of science, graduate and indigenous knowledges papers.

We would like to thank all our fantastic volunteers from UOW, guided by our very talented Dr Robyn Morris.