Samuel A. W. Evans' Research

Conference Season is now over, and I participated in quite a few this year.  It began for me in June with three conferences/workshops in the UK.  At Oxford, I attended the Oxford Intelligence Group‘s discussion of whether the UK needs an intelligence doctrine (notes available on their website).  In London, UCL put on a workshop concerning the current work which has developed off of the late Dame Mary Douglas.

I then attended the Science Democracy Network‘s joint meeting with the Royal Society at Kavli House, where I presented a paper on “Imaginaries of State Security”.  The main point of this paper was to outline three periods of history in (Western) international relations and how each period is characterized by a different set of assumptions about what should be considered militarily significant technology and how it should be controlled.

Back in the US, I presented a new case study on the BP oil spill that I am developing for next year’s Introduction to Technology and Society undergraduate course that I am helping run with Venky Narayanamurti.

My final conference was the Society for the Social Studies of Science meeting in Tokyo, where I presented a paper on “Technology control and imagined international orders,” which was a re-worked version of my SDN presentation.

Now back at Harvard, I plan on spending this semester getting several articles out and hopefully designing a couple workshops and grant applications.

In the Autumn of 2009, I will take up a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University.  The post is divided between the Kennedy School of Government (and in particular the Program on Science, Technology, & Society) and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). My job will involve building links between the two schools, helping to design an undergraduate course in Technology & Society, publishing at least one journal article, and preparing my thesis for publication as a book. I will be working closely with Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies,  and Venky Narayanamurti, former Dean of SEAS, and now Director of Science, Technology and Public Policy Program at Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School.

For a more personal take on this transition, please see my Journal entry.