THE DIGITAL EXHIBITION
RESEARCH TEAM
Research Leads
Cynthia Selin, Arizona State University
Cynthia Selin explores future-orientation from an interdisciplinary perspective, asking questions about how the future is mobilized for social change and how foresight is applied in the governance of emerging technologies. She leads the research program on Anticipation and Deliberation for the NSF funded Center for Nanotechnology in Society where she investigates the social implications of new technologies. Building on decades of experience with nanotechnology, her latest research focuses on socio-technical systems with inquiries related to sustainability, climate and the energy sector. Dr. Selin teaches a course on foresight methodologies. Email: cynthia.selin@asu.edu
Phoenix Tour
Kelly Campbell Rawlings, University of Southern California
Kelly Campbell Rawlings holds a Ph.D. in Public Administration from ASU. Her research focuses on examining the intersections between governance, citizens, and civil society and identifying how these interactions impact the individuals and institutions involved. She recently expanded this focus to study the emerging ideas and institutions of democracy and the ways in which public participation is understood and interconnected throughout the various spheres of life and sectors of society. She is currently in the process of developing a genealogy of public participation in order to identify the ways in which the images, assumptions, and expectations surrounding citizen inclusion have evolved throughout the formal history of the field of public administration. Email: krawling@usc.edu
Kathryn de Ridder-Vignone, Duke Energy Center for Innovation
Kathryn de Ridder-Vignone has a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Cornell University. Her dissertation research examines the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network and its role in democratizing science and technology through informal civic education and learning. Her other areas of interest include: social and ethical issues of emerging technologies, public understanding of and engagement with emerging technologies, the role of education in the governance of emerging technologies, and technologies as agents of social and political change. Email: k.deridder-vignone@hartsvillesc.gov
Phoenix Tour
Students
Carlo Altamirano Allende, Arizona State University
Carlo Altamirano Allende is a Fulbright fellow doctoral student in the Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology program at ASU and research assistant at CSPO-CNS. His main research interests lie in the convergence between science and democracy, focusing mainly on public participation processes and citizen engagement for anticipatory governance in urban environments. He holds a B.S. and M.S. in Physics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) where he researched on the statistical and thermodynamical basis for Complex Systems theory. Email: carlo.altamirano-allende@asu.edu
Phoenix Tour
Jathan Sadowski, Arizona State University
Jathan Sadowski mostly writes about political economy and social theory/justice. He is currently researching and writing a dissertation about "smart cities"—looking at questions related to discourse and policy (how do people conceptualize and implement them?), power and control (who makes decisions and how are people differently affected?), and cyborg urbanization (how do the interfaces between body–tech–city change?). Jathan is the graduate research assistant for the Frankenstein Bicentennial Project, and he works with CNS on public engagement and technology assessment. He also freelance write features, op-eds, and book reviews about the politics/ethics of technology for many popular magazines, newspapers, and blogs. Email: jathan.sadowski@asu.edu
Phoenix Tour
Site Partners
Portland Tour
Thad Miller, Portland State University
Thad Miller is an Assistant Professor of Urban Civic Ecology at Portland State University’s Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning. He is also a Faculty Fellow with the Institute for Sustainable Solutions and an Associated Faculty of the Ecosystem Services in Urbanizing Regions IGERT program. His research explores how scientific and technological (S&T) solutions to sustainability are framed, developed, deployed, and contested, and how they are imagined to meet visions of social and natural well-being. He is interested in how sustainability is interpreted and enrolled in S&T and how it is materialized and settled in S&T policy and design choices. Email: thaddeus.miller@pdx.edu
St. Paul Tour
Roopali Phadke, Macalester College
Roopali Phadke is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Environmental policy and politics at Macalester College. Her research and teaching is at the nexus of environmental studies, international development and science and technology studies. Her interests lie in the democratization of science and technology decision-making and the hybridization of technical expertise and local knowledge. Her current research focuses on private and public development of water and energy resources.
Washington, DC Tour
David Tomblin, University of Maryland
David Tomblin is the director of the STS Scholars Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. He also teaches in the Science, Technology and Society Department at Virginia Tech’s NCR campus. He also has a forthcoming book, Power, Knowledge, and Tribal Autonomy: Ecological Restoration and the White Mountain Apache Tribe (2014). He currently works with Experts and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (ECAST) on a number of citizen engagement projects. Email: dtomblin@umd.edu
Mahmud Farooque, Arizona State University
Mahmud’s work at CSPO’s Washington DC Office focuses on linking science and innovation policy to improved decision-making and better societal outcomes. Mahmud coordinates CSPO’s monthly New Tools for Science Policy Breakfast Seminar series to catalyze discussions and collaborations between science policy researchers and decision makers in Washington DC. He co-leads CSPO’s Program Managers Network, which provides a platform for capturing best practices and sustained engagement with agencies, professional societies, media and non-profits. Mahmud co-leads CSPO’s Concepts and Tools for a New American Science Policy (CaTNASP) program for early career policy practitioners and Science, Policy and Citizenship program for High School age students. Email: Mahmud.Farooque@asu.edu
Springfield (MA) Tour
Gretchen Gano, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Gretchen Gano earned her PhD at Arizona State University in the Human & Social Dimensions of Science and Technology program. Her research examines formal technology assessment and explores experimental public engagement in urban and informal science education settings. Gano is a Lecturer for the Science, Technology and Society Initiative, a campus-wide effort based at the Center for and Public Policy and Administration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is active in the Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (ECAST) Network. ECAST is a national network of nonpartisan policy research institutions, universities, and informal science education centers working together to support better-informed governmental and societal decisions on complex issues involving science and technology. As a part of ECAST's latest project, Gano was the project manager for research and citizen recruitment efforts to host the Massachusetts site of a global citizen consultation organized by the Danish Board of Technology called World Wide Views on Biodiversity. World Wide Views is a participatory technology assessment focused on incorporating citizen views on international governance at the United Nations Conference of Parties on Biological Diversity (Cop 11). Email: Gretchen.gano@asu.edu
Krista Harper, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Krista Harper is an applied cultural anthropologist who investigates urban mobilizations, environment, food, and social justice, and, most recently, university libraries. I use ethnographic and participatory visual and digital research methods, with projects in Hungary, Portugal, and the United States. In my 2006 book, Wild Capitalism: Environmental Activists and Post-socialist Political Ecology in Hungary (2006), I examined the shifting meanings of “civil society” and “environment” as environmentalists encountered new political and ecological realities after state socialism. My book "Participatory Visual and Digital Research" (with co-author Aline Gubrium) was published by Left Coast Press in early 2013. I have used PhotoVoice specifically to investigate public health and environmental issues in a Hungarian Roma (Gypsies) community and youth activism in community food systems in western Massachusetts. I am developing a new applied anthropology project in the UMass Amherst Library. My next international research project focuses on urban agriculture and heritage policies in Portugal. I am the PI (with Jacqueline Urla) of two NSF research and training grants, "Culture and Heritage in European Societies and Spaces" (NSF-OISE #0968575 and IIA-1261172). Email: kharper@anthro.umass.edu
Edmonton Tour
Kevin Jones, University of Alberta
Kevin Jones has a background in the social study of science and society, environmental sociology and policy studies. At the City-Region Studies Center of the University of Alberta, he is researching the relationships between technological innovation, urban development and community participation. He is currently cross-appointed with the Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology where he is studying institutional adaptation to risk scenarios including food safety to climate change.
UPCOMING RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS
The following research articles have been submitted for publication (links will be added as they become available):
Selin et. al.’s “Experiments in Engagement: Designing PEST for Capacity Building” (under review Public Understanding of Science) suggests that the development and practice of civic capacities are desirable ends of public engagement, which should vie for prominence alongside of the traditional, though nevertheless elusive, outcomes of policy impact or integration in decision-making. These capacities are important enablers for laypeople to contribute productively—in a distributed and diverse fashion—to the democratization of science and technology.
In “Seeing Differently: Enticing Reflexivity through Mediated Participation in Place in the Futurescape City Tours,” Selin and Gano argue that new engagement methods are needed to connect direct, public experiences of the sociotechnical systems wiring the city that embrace diverse ways of knowing and seeing while also cultivating a critical imagination about the future (in press, in Gubrium, A. and K. Harper (eds). Engaging Participatory Visual and Digital Methods. Left Coast Press).
Altamirano and Selin explore the role of photography during the FCTs in connection with interrogating urban imaginaries in "Seeing the City: Photography as a Place of Work” (accepted to a special issue on “"Public Engagement for Environmental Sustainability in a Technological Age" in Environmental Studies and Sciences).
In “Against Blank Slate Futuring: Noticing Obduracy in the City through Experiential Methods of Public Engagement,” Selin and Sadowski argue that obduracy is an important, yet often neglected, aspect of technology assessment that must be taken into account when questioning alternative future assemblages of science and technology. They look to the ways the FCTs foreground the ways the future is already conditioned by contemporary and historic social, material, and economic circumstances. (in press in Kearnes, M. & J. Chilvers (eds). Remaking Participation: Science, Environment and Emerging Publics. Routledge).
Gano’s doctoral dissertation, “The Soft Megamachine: Lewis Mumford’s Vision of Technological Society and Implications for (participatory) Technology,” (Dec 2014) features how the FCT methods can be understood in light of Kevin Lynch’s groundbreaking work on wayfinding.