A conversation between 2022 Holberg Laureate Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard University, and Professor Stephen Hilgartner, Cornell University.
Meet the 2022 Holberg Laureate, Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard University), in conversation with Professor Stephen Hilgartner (Cornell University).
Professors Jasanoff and Hilgartner are internationally leading scholars in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and have done extensive research on the social dimensions and politics of biomedicine and biotechnology, among other fields. What is STS and what insights does it have to offer to medical and health researchers and practitioners? And, to allude to the title of Professors Jasanoff’s latest book, what is the answer to the question “Can Science Make Sense of Life?”
This event is a part of the 2022 Holberg Week, which takes place from 7 to 10 June.
Participants
Sheila Jasanoff
Photo: Thor Brødreskift
Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School. A pioneer in the social sciences, she explores the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies. Jasanoff founded and directs the STS Program at Harvard University. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2022. Her books include The Fifth Branch (1990), Science at the Bar (1995), Designs on Nature (2005), The Ethics of Invention (2016), and Can Science Make Sense of Life? (2019).
Stephen Hilgartner
Photo: Cornell University
Stephen Hilgartner is professor at the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University. Hilgartner studies the social dimensions and politics of contemporary and emerging science and technology, especially in the life sciences. His research focuses on situations in which scientific knowledge is implicated in establishing, contesting, and maintaining social order — a theme he has examined in studies of expertise, property formation, risk disputes, and biotechnology. His most recent book, Reordering Life: Knowledge and Control in the Genomics Revolution (MIT Press, 2017), examines how new knowledge and new regimes of control took shape during the Human Genome Project. Hilgartner’s book on science advice—Science on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama—won the Rachel Carson Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science. He is also a co-editor of two recent books: Science & Democracy: Making Knowledge and Making Power in the Biosciences and Beyond (Routledge, 2015) and Handbook of Genomics, Health and Society (Routledge, 2018). Hilgartner is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Moderator
Roger Strand
Photo: Merete Brandt
Roger Strand is professor and former director at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen, and a co-director of the European Centre for Governance in Complexity. His research focuses on uncertainty and complexity at interfaces between science and policy.
