Science & Justice Training Program
Through a grant awarded to UCSC by the National Science Foundation, in the Spring of 2010 UCSC launched the “Ethics and Justice in Science and Engineering Training Program”, known informally as the Science & Justice Training Program. This program grows out of the success of the UCSC Science and Justice Working Group, and creates a research and education program that trains science and engineering graduate students alongside social science and humanities graduate students to create ethical inquiries from within their own practice. Rather than treating ethics and justice concerns as issues to be addressed after research questions and engineering practices have formed, the program trains science and engineering graduate students how to identify and respond to moments within their own research in which good scientific and engineering practices require attentiveness to ethics and justice. Conversely, it teaches social science, humanities and arts students how to trace the links between scientific and engineering practices and practices of equity, equality, and power. Thus, the program promises to open up not only novel epistemologies, but new sites and practices for pursuing social justice. The program is unique in its effort to broaden the scope of ethics education in science and engineering to include questions of social justice.
The program provides seminars, intensive mentoring, funding, and research support to Science & Justice Fellows.
The Training Program’s Primary Investigators are Professors Jenny Reardon and Karen Barad. Reardon is appointed in Sociology and the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering, and work on the interweaving of social, scientific, and technical issues in genomics, bioinformatics, and biomedicine. Barad is appointed in Feminist Studies, History of Consciousness, and Philosophy, and is interested in meta-issues in science studies and questions of space, time, matter, and justice. Of particular interest to Barad are the physical sciences and the bio-physical organic-inorganic interface.
We will be hosting an informational session on January 25, 2011, 12:00-1:30 PM, in Humanities I 320. Lunch will be provided.
The next course offered will be the Introductory Seminar (SOC/FMST/BME 268A), Spring Quarter 2011, 2-5 PM, location TBA.
Click here for more information.
Science & Justice Fellows
2010 Cohort
- Celina Kapoor, Anthropology
- Martha Kenney, History of Consciousness
- Alexis Mourenza, Philosophy
- Costanza Rampini, Environmental Studies
- Jennie Ohayon, Environmental Studies
- Felicia Peck, Politics
- Micha Rahder, Anthropology
- Benjamin Roome, Philosophy
- Tiffany Wise-West, Environmental Studies