Sheila Jasanoff
Sheila Jasanoff | |
---|---|
Jay H. Jasanoff | |
Children | Maya Jasanoff, Alan Jasanoff |
Website | https://sheilajasanoff.org/ |
Sheila Sen Jasanoff is an
Early life and education
Jasanoff was born in
Jasanoff attended Radcliffe College, where she studied mathematics as an undergraduate, receiving her bachelor's degree in 1964. She then studied linguistics, receiving her M.A. at the University of Bonn (then part of West Germany). She returned to Harvard to complete a Ph.D. in linguistics in 1973, on the grammar of the Bengali language, elucidating why Bangla did not share certain features with its closest relatives in the Eastern Indo-Aryan language family, Assamese and Odia.[3]
She completed her J.D. at
Work
Jasanoff founded and directs the Program on Science, Technology, and Society at the
One line of Jasanoff's work demonstrates how the political culture of different democratic societies influences how they assess evidence and expertise in policymaking. Her first book (with Brickman and Ilgen), Controlling Chemicals (1985), examines the regulation of toxic substances in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom.[7] The book showed how the routines of decision making in these countries reflected different conceptions of what counts as evidence and of how expertise should operate in a policy context. In Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States (2005), she has shown how different societies employ different modes of public reasoning when making decisions involving science and technology.[8][9] These differences, which in part reflect distinct "civic epistemologies," are deeply embedded in institutions and shape how policy issues are framed and processed by the bureaucratic machinery of modern states.
Jasanoff has also contributed to scholarship on the interaction of science and law. Science at the Bar (1995), for example, reached beyond the prevailing diagnoses of structural incompatibilities between science and law to explore how these socially embedded institutions interact and, to a certain extent, mutually constitute each other.[10][11] The concept of regulatory science, conducted for the purposes of meeting legally mandated standards, and the "boundary" drawing activities of science advisory committees are analyzed in The Fifth Branch (1990).[12][13] More recently, she has explored the "rise of the statistical victim" in toxic torts, as the law with its individualistic orientation has increasingly encountered, and sought ways to accommodate, the statistical vision of such fields as epidemiology.[14] In her work on science and law, as well as her research on science in the state, she takes an approach that links ideas from constitutional law, political theory, and science studies to consider the "constitutional" role of science in modern democratic states.[15]
Jasanoff has considered the
Jasanoff also has contributed to popularising and refining Science and Technology Studies as a field.[18] Prior to moving to Harvard, she was the founding chair of the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University. She is also the founder of the Science and Democracy Network, a group of scholars interested in the study of science and the state in democratic societies that has met annually since 2002.[19] Her research has been recognized with many awards, including the 2004 Bernal Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science,[20] a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2018 Albert O. Hirschman Prize from the Social Science Research Council.[21]
In March 2022 she was awarded the 2022 Holberg Prize "for her groundbreaking research in science and technology studies."[22][19]
Personal
She is married to
In February 2022, Jasanoff was one of 38 Harvard faculty to sign a letter to the Harvard Crimson defending Professor John Comaroff, who had been found to have violated the university's sexual and professional conduct policies. The letter defended Comaroff as "an excellent colleague, advisor and committed university citizen" and expressed dismay over his being sanctioned by the university.[23] After students filed a lawsuit with detailed allegations of Comaroff's actions and the university's failure to respond, Jasanoff was one of several signatories to say that she wished to retract her signature.[24]
Selected publications
- ISBN 978-0-415-40329-0.
- ISBN 978-1-509-52271-2.
- ISBN 978-0-674-30062-0.
References
- ^ "The American Philosophical Society Welcomes New Members for 2021".
- ^ "Sheila Jasanoff : Sheila's World". Retrieved 2020-12-08.
- ^ "Sheila Jasanoff : Road to STS". Retrieved 2020-12-08.
- ^ a b Le, Quynh-Nhu (May 29, 2014). "Sheila S. Jasanoff '64, Professor at Harvard Kennedy School". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 28 April 2015.
- ^ a b "It Runs in the Family". Harvard Magazine. July 30, 2010. Retrieved 28 April 2015.
- ^ "Director: Sheila Jasanoff". Program on Science, Technology & Society. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University.
- ^ Brickman, Ilgen, and Jasanoff, Controlling Chemicals. Cornell University Press, 1985.
- S2CID 170163161.
- ^ Jasanoff, Sheila, Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States, Princeton University Press, 2005.
- .
- ^ Jasanoff, Sheila, Science at the Bar, Harvard University Press, 1995.
- .
- ^ Jasanoff, Sheila, The Fifth Branch: Science Advisors as Policymakers, Harvard University Press, 1990.
- ^ Jasanoff, Sheila, "Science and the Statistical Victim: Modernizing Knowledge in Breast Implant Litigation," Social Studies of Science, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Feb., 2002), pp. 37-69.
- ^ Jasanoff, Sheila, "In a Constitutional Moment," in Social Studies of Science and Technology: Looking back, Ahead (Bernward Joerges & Helga Nowotny, eds., 2003).
- ISBN 978-0801495212. Retrieved 29 April 2015.
- ISBN 9781863956086. Retrieved 29 April 2015.
- ^ Bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. P., Pinch, T. and Douglas, D. G., The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2012.
- ^ a b Herszenhorn, Miles J. (March 21, 2022). "Harvard Kennedy School Professor Sheila Jasanoff '64 Awarded Prestigious Holberg Prize". Harvard Crimson. Retrieved March 21, 2022.
'I am especially proud that the Kennedy School has been a home for her pathbreaking work that explores how policy, society, and law can play a role in scientific and technological decision-making,' [HKS Dean] Elmendorf wrote.
- ^ "Bernal Prize Winners"
- ^ SSRC "2018: Sheila Jasanoff
- ^ "Science and Technology Studies Pioneer Sheila Jasanoff Named 2022 Holberg Laureate". holbergprisen.no. University of Bergen (Norway). Retrieved 14 March 2022.
- ^ "38 Harvard Faculty Sign Open Letter Questioning Results of Misconduct Investigations into Prof. John Comaroff". www.thecrimson.com. The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 9 Feb 2022.
- ^ "3 graduate students file sexual harassment suit against prominent Harvard anthropology professor". www.bostonglobe.com. The Boston Globe. Retrieved 9 Feb 2022.