To kulturer et halvt århundrede senere

Ph.d.-kursus og åbent seminar:

C. P. Snows to kulturer – et halvt århundrede senere

Københavns Universitet, torsdag den 24. maj kl. 9-17

Den amerikanske fysiker C. P. Snow skrev i 1959 en kritisk skildring af de kulturforskelle, som han kunne iagttage mellem natur- og kulturvidenskaberne, og som han mente forhindrede en dialog, der var og er en nødvendig forudsætning for at sætte os i stand til at løse verdens problemer. Siden da har såkaldt våde og tørre fag i vekslende grad og under forskellige former søgt at tilnærme sig hinanden, men institutionelt og traditionsmæssigt danner opsplitningen i to kulturer fortsat grundlaget for den akademiske verden.

I dette kursus vil en række forskere med personlige erfaringer med kulturgrænseoverskridende forskning give deres bidrag til at give den nødvendige dialog nyt liv. Og det er dermed vores håb, at kurset i sin helhed kan være en slags statusopgørelse over Snows diagnose her et halvt århundrede efter, at den blev fremsat.

Program

C. P. Snows to kulturer – et halvt århundrede senere

9-10 Finn Collin (Filosofi, KU) C. P. Snow i videnskabshistorien

10-12 Anne Løkke (Historie, KU), Klemens Kappel (Filosofi, KU) og Thorkild I.A. Sørensen (Sygdomsforebyggelse, KU): Mennesker og sundhed

12-13 frokostpause

13-15 Finn Arler (Planlægning, AAU), Bent Odgaard (Geologi, AU) og Claus Emmeche (Videnskabsstudier, KU): Biodiversitet, landskab og samfund

15-17 Frank Sejersen (Eskimologi, KU), Anette Reenberg (Geografi, KU) og Anders Blok (Sociologi, KU): Kultur- og klimaforandringer

Tid: Torsdag den 24. maj 2012 kl. 9.00- 17.00 (NB: ikke akademisk kvarter)

Sted: Københavns Universitet Amager (Nye KUA), lokale 27.1.47

Pointværdi: 0,9 ETCS-points

Sprog: Dansk

Litteratur: En tekstsamling vil blive tilsendt deltagerne inden kursusstart.

Tilmelding: Send en mail til Tatjana Crnogorac (tacr@hum.ku.dk)


ps: Kurset er også annonceret som et åbent seminar i regi af vores nye Centre for Cultural Studies in Sustainability (hvis hjemmeside endnu ikke er færdig)

Skabelse af ny og særegen viden

Cross-disciplinary PhD Course on

Originality in science

- personal perspectives and

collaborative strategies.

This PhD course aims at providing a space for reflection about originality in scientific research. Originality is taken as one of the main norms of science (Merton 1973, Ziman 2000), the norm that scientific claims contribute something new, whether a new problem, a new approach, new data, a new theory or a new explanation. We will discuss this norm, share perspectives and techniques, and collaborate in grasping this theme. We will investigate this value/norm by projecting it onto several discussable dichotomies, those of individual-collective, competition-collaboration, freedom-structure, and originality as bottom-up vs top-down.

Considering the division between individual and collective in the pursuit of a PhD degree, one may ask: How much of your Ph.D. research is done by you as an individual (involved in a 'lonely' process) and how much is done collaboratively by (or through) asking others to help, to participate, to supervise, to discuss, to contribute to common papers? How does competition versus cooperation cross-cut the "solely my part" / "do together with others part" distinction? What conflicts and benefits may emerge and how to handle them? How do those conflicts resonate or disresonate with general values of science like the Mertonian ones?

Additionally to these questions, most PhD students have asked themselves about the process of making a PhD, "What am I doing?", "Why am I doing this?", “How am I doing it?”, “How to move on?”, “How to focus?”, “How do I know what I can contribute?”, at times with a great sense of isolation, but these questions can be asked in a group setting, with the possibility of creating better personal strategies integrating inspiration and collaboration from different sources.

Another important process concerns the types of scientific thinking. Scientific thinking is complex and it involves, at least, creative thinking and critical thinking – at the same time. Academics have a tendency to train the critical thinking more than creative thinking, so in this course we will both question and reflect upon originality in science as well as foster creative thinking by considering theories and cases and use the potential of a mixed international course and the potential differences (in approach, styles of reasoning, science as a vocation) that are seen and worked with as an asset, a potential.

Thus, we will discuss the theme of originality in science by relating it to other values of science, such as openness, critical review (from peers or supervisors) and the general scientific standards of the field, and frame that in the context of the working processes in academia, with examples from creativity in research, and from collaborations between art and science. Moreover, we will use philosophical techniques to reveal the issues related to such a desired value of originality in science.

At this course there is the awareness that we learn in different ways, and tend to create our own set of individual and collaborative practices. So, there will be a mixture of space for peer-to-peer learning and inspiration from experienced researchers.

It is the aim to make this a truly mixed course, with participants from different disciplines and different national and educational backgrounds, as we believe this will contribute to the creative processes during the course, and thereby enhance the learning outcomes for participants. Although the focus of the PhD course is on the natural and technical sciences and aimed at those students, students from the social sciences and the humanities are welcome, as they can also profit from the course, as well as contribute to a greater diversity of perspectives.

Dates: 18-19 + 21-22 June, 2012, 9am-4pm

Where: Department of Science Education, Øster Voldgade 3 (the old astronomical observatory), 1350 Copenhagen K.
Credits: 5 ECTS
Registration: latest by the 18th of May. See website.

Lecturers:

Claus Emmeche (philosophy of science), Department of Science Education, Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies, University of Copenhagen
Klemens Kappel (philosophy of knowledge), Department of Philosophy, University of Copenhagen
Sofie Kobayashi (science pedagogy), Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen
Finn Thorbjørn Hansen (philosophical counseling), Department of Curriculum Research, Århus University
Victor Vidal (creative problem solving, artist & retired professor), DTU
Rut Jesus (art and science, guest lecturer), Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen
Mette Høst (art and science), Artist in Residence, Copenhagen
Jon Nixon (higher education), University of Sheffield, UK
Lisa Olsson (social psychology), Gothenburg University, Sweden
Eva Brodin (PhD education), Centre for Educational Development, Lund University, Sweden

Aquaculture: ethical, legal and social aspects

Please see attached file that contains information about a Ph.D.-course that will be held 13-17 August 2012 on Aquaculture and Ethics.

If you know Ph.D.-students that could be interested in this, please send them this mail. The curse is interdisciplinary, so we welcome students from all disciplines.

Ph.d.-kursus i cybersemiotik

PhD Course on

Cybersemiotics and Transdisciplinarity: Applications in linguistics, communication, semiotics, and art-technology analysis

Time and place: 20 – 24 August, 2012
Copenhagen Business School, Dalgas Have 15, 2000 Frederiksberg.

The course is first of all an explanation and exploration of the integrative transdisciplinary framework Cybersemiotics. The primary curriculum is: Cybersemiotics: Why Information is not enough first published in 2008 at Toronto University Press and again in 2010. You can also find it as a Google book. Se a short description of Cybersemiotics in Glossarium-BITri: http://glossarium.bitrum.unileon.es/glossary/cybersemiotics .

We will study the integrative synthesis in Cybersemiotics and how it is carried out in two steps: The first is to accept two major and very different transdisciplinary paradigms as both being legitimate: 1. The cybernetic-informational approach leading to cognitive science’s information processing paradigm and second order cybernetics, autopoiesis theory and Luhmann’s system science 2. The Peircean phaneroscopic, triadic, pragmaticistic, evolutionary, semiotic approach to meaning, leading to modern biosemiotics. Of these 1. is based on an entropic and mathematical definition of information and self-organization in a material and informational world or in autopoietic systems, but with no concepts of first-person conscious experience and meaningful linguistic intersubjective communication; 2. is based on a phenomenological intersubjective world of partly self-organizing triadic sign processes in an experiential embodied, meaningful world.

The second step involves following and explaining the development from first order cybernetics to second order cybernetic and autopoiesis theory from Gregory Bateson through Heinz von Foerster to Maturana and Varela, ending with Niklas Luhmann’s threefold autopoietic system theory. Furthermore, embodiment theory from Lakoff and Johnson plus Merleau-Ponty is discussed. An integration of these views with a Peircean biosemiotics is shown in a transdisciplinary philosophy of science model that will be explained and discussed. All this will be lectured on by Søren Brier during the first part of the week in interaction with the course participants. The second part of the week will bring in researchers who have contributed to the development and applications of the idea of Cybersemiotics.

Faculty
Professor Søren Brier (CBS), Ole Nedergaard-Thomsen (PhD in Linguistics), Professor Per Durst-Andersen (Linguistics), Kathrine Elisabeth Anker (PhD in Technology and Art) and Professor in Semiotics and Communication, Paul Cobley

Course Coordinator
Professor Søren Brier

More on the course here.

Kold krig kolde steder - STMC-møde

PhD.-workshop:

The title of the PhD.-workshop is “Reflections on the knowledge/power nexus in the Global Cold War”, with John Krige, Georgia Tech, School of History, Technology and Society.

Time: 9 December 2010, 9-11.30 AM
Place: Meeting Room, Department of Science Studies, Building 1110, Aarhus University.

Participation in the PhD-workshop is awarded 1 ECTS.
To register for this event and request required readings please contact stm@hum.au.dk, no later than 2 December at 10 AM.
Travel costs will be reimbursed for students from other places than Aarhus University.

The Conference:

The title of the conference is “Cold War science, colonial politics and national identity in the Arctic”.

Time: 9 December 2010, 13.00-17.00
Place: Meeting Room, Department of Science Studies, Auditorium, Building 1110, Aarhus University.

Program
Session 1: 13.00 – 14.45
"The Unreliable Nation: Science and theTechnopolitics of Failure"
Edward Imhotep-Jones, Science and Technology Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada

"Elements for a transnational history of cold war science: Asymmetry, hybridity and national identity"
John Krige, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

14.45-15.15 break

Session 2: 15.15 – 17.00
"Cold War and Cold Science. Greenland in Danish-American Relationship 1945-1968."
Thorsten Boring-Olesen, Dept. of History, Aarhus University, Denmark

"Exploring Greenland: Denmark, the US Military and Science and Technology in the Cold War"
Matthias Heymann, Dept. of Science Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark

To read abstracts please go to http://stm.au.dk/uploads/media/cold_war_abstracts.pdf

For information on both events please seen attached posters.
Coffee, tea and fruit are provided.
Please register for one or both events at stm@hum.au.dk before 2 December at 10 AM.

Best wishes
Helene Sloth Borgholm, STMC, Network for Science, Technology and Medicine Studies

Aarhus University, Building 1465-615
Jens Chr. Skous Vej 7, DK-8000 Aarhus C
Email: idehsb [at] hum.au.dk
www.stm.au.dk

Ph.d.-kursus i forskningsetik

Phd. course – research ethics - autumn 2010

Research Ethics for Scientists

and Engineers in the 21st Century

From November 8 to 12, 2010, the Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies at the University of Copenhagen (CPNSS), together with the Institute for Education, Philosophy and Learning at Aalborg University (IEPL) will organize an international and interdisciplinary PhD course entitled “Research Ethics for Scientists and Engineers in the 21st Century”.

The course will address the ethical dilemmas that researchers face in turbulent times, where clear-cut distinctions between pure and applied science can no longer be upheld. The course is aimed at creating a space where PhD students can qualify their reflections on their role as young researchers by drawing on philosophical, sociological, and ethical perspectives in analyzing possibilities and problems of contemporary science.

Course participants will be asked to analyze real dilemmas taken from the intersection between science and society – often taking the experiences of individual researchers as the starting point for the analysis. The case analyses will be related to the following five main themes that will be treated during the course:

1. Scientific Conduct and Misconduct: At the Fringe of Normal Science

2. Scientific Social Responsibility in Cases of Life and Death

3. The Conflicting Values of Research in a Post-academic Setting

4. Post Normal Science and Wicked Problems

5. Ethics as a problems-solving activity: Towards a Socially Responsible Scientific Practice

Prior to course take-off the course participants will be expected to have read text materials.

Venue: Niels Bohr Institute, Blegdamsvej 17, Copenhagen. Aud. M (building M)
Language: English.

Course fee: None. Participants will be required to take care of the transportation to Copenhagen, as well as of board and lodging.

Teachers: Christian Baron; Tom Holmgaard Børsen (organizers); Mikkel Willum Johansen; and Nicolas König.

Invited lectures: Anja Skaar Jacobsen (NBA); Thomas Plough (CIT, AAU); Anders Frøslev Jensen (CPNSS, KU); Gitte Meyer (CeBRA, KU) and Mercy Kamara (CBIT, RUC).

Registration: Please sign up by sending your email to baron [at] nbi.dk . Last registration date October 25th, 2010. A confirmation of your participation will be sent out within three days of registering.

Merit: 2.5 ECTS for simple participation with oral presentation during the course, 5 ECTS for participation with paper assignment. These papers may be delivered in Danish or English.

Download a more detailed description of the course here.

Skærme for viden - skærmer for viden?

PhD Course (5 ETCS):

Framing Screens:

Knowledge, Interaction and Practice

27-30 September 2010

Organizers:

Technologies in Practice Faculty Group (f.k.a. Design of Organizational IT)

Lecturers: Lucy Suchman (Lancaster University), Helen Verran (University of Melbourne), Christopher Gad (IT University of Copenhagen)

This PhD course aims to unfold empirically and analytically how computer screens and other displays help ‘project’ or otherwise ‘perform’ knowledge, interaction and practice. Screens are increasingly ubiquitous, for example as part of personal computers, televisions, cameras, surveillance equipment, ticketing equipment, mobile phones and other handheld devices. Simultaneously screens play an increasingly important role in a wide range of human practices relating to work, play, travel, care, learning, planning, monitoring, designing, coordinating, modelling, policing and much else. At the same time screens are curious entities. They may stretch human interactions nearby to globally-distributed locations. They seem to multiply the world around us while simultaneously constructing very specific fields of vision. Thus, screens perform cuts between displayed worlds and human knowledge about the world. Screens also mediate human action in particular ways by actively participating in new visions that define and situate action. With their capacity to organize human attention elsewhere screens may enact viewer displacement, as viewers becomes screened off. Thus boundaries may shift between screens, the knowledge they present, the interactions they facilitate and the practices they engender. For these reasons, screens are objects of interest for contemporary social scientific research into technologically mediated environments, including anthropology, cultural/media studies, design studies, and science and technology studies (STS) . Drawing on a range of theoretical traditions the course aims to frame screens by exploring their implications for knowledge, interaction and practice. This includes but is not limited to analytical topics such as:

• Shifting ’screen’ relationships between practice (e.g. dwelling, working, travelling, playing, planning, controlling) and viewer positions (e.g. onlooker, spectator, user, voyeur, investigator)
• Variations between heterogeneous on- and off-screen interactions
• Screens as organizers/disruptors/mediators of human knowledge, experience, perspectives, etc.
• Space, place and temporalities of screens in local/global/glocal/translocal situations and fields
• Comparative or exploratory studies of recent ‘hi-tech’ displays (e.g. HD, LCD, mega-screens, 3-D, touch) vs. ‘traditional’ ones (e.g. theatres, windows, veils, frames)
• Ethnographies of screens including qualitative implications of screen types, modes, juxtapositions, placements and proximities in practice
• Philosophical investigations of screens including debates about visible/invisible and presence/absence
• ‘Screen’ as a conceptual metaphor in social studies of technology, in other words what human practices can be understood as ’screening technology’?

Further information and application procedure may be found here: http://itu.dk/en/Forskning/Phd-uddannelsen/PhD-Courses/Screens%20-%20organizers%20of%20knowledge%20and%20interaction.aspx

Ph.D.-kursus i kontroverskortlægning

Ph.D.-kursus:
From june 7th-25th the Technical University of Denmark offers a 5 ECTS course with the title Mapping Controversies.

“Mapping Controversies” was first taught by Bruno Latour at the École des Mines in Paris and has been jointly developed as an online programme involving Science Po, MIT, Oxford University, the University of Manchester, the Ècole Polytechnique Féderale de Lausanne and the University of Amsterdam. Each of these institutions teaches its own version of the course to a diverse mix of students ranging from environmental and political scientists to architects and engineers.
A further description of the Technical University’s version of the course can be found on the DASTS site here.

Students from all Danish Universities are welcome register as guest students (deadline May 15th). Questions about the course may be directed to Anders Kristian Munk or Torben Elgaard Jensen.

Ph.D.-kursus i håndtering af det mellemværende

Ph.D.-kursus:

ANT: from methodological principles to concrete strategies for managing the in-between

A PhD-course hosted by the Department of Organization (Ursula Plesner & Maja Horst) at CBS
Guest faculty: Anne Beaulieu, Virtual Knowledge Studio, Amsterdam, Mike Michael, Goldsmiths, University of London, Noortje Marres, Oxford University

The aim this course is to interrogate how we might devise concrete research strategies based on Actor-Network-Theory’s material semiotic approach, in particular the principles of symmetry and agnosticism. A premise underlying the concept of actor-networks is that we should not strive for the reconciliation of dualities (between, for instance, subject/object, material/symbolic, virtual/real), but completely dissolve them and follow how heterogeneous actants are interwoven in complex assemblages that both comprise and transcend such categories. Now, while ANT scholars have argued theoretically for the dissolution of dualities and offered countless empirical stories of heterogeneous networks, the ANT literature is rarely particularly articulate about what we could call middle-range methodological issues regarding, for instance, casing, delineation, etc. Hence, although theoretical discussions and empirical examples are part of this course, it will give priority to discussions about challenges arising from concrete research designs. If we consider ANT a methodology of the in-between of ‘the virtual and the real’, ‘the immaterial and the material’, ‘the social and the technical’, we might ask how we turn this type of methodological sensibility into concrete strategies.

Event information: See more on the DASTS site here
June 7, 2010 9:00 am to June 8, 2010 3:00 pm
August 17, 2010 10:00 am to August 18, 2010 4:00 pm

Kurset finder sted 20.-23. september, se kommentar nedenfor

Etnografiske data i videnskabs- og teknologistudier

Ph.D.-workshop ved Brit Ross Winthereik

på IT-universitetet i København d. 21. maj kl. 9-16:

(...) "The literature on ethnographic methods and data analysis used by STS-researchers or in design anthropology is often written by anthropologists. In STS the classical texts (Latour, Mol and others) do not provide much guidance as to how to analyse the ethnographic data that is the foundation of a lot of STS-research. A main difficulty, broadly speaking, is that this literature describes studies of socio-cultural formations and contexts that have been analysed with the purpose of contributing to central debates within anthropology. This aim differs significantly from the role played by ethnography within STS or design anthropology, where technological objects play a major role as objects of study and where ‘the field’ is not a place one inhabits for a shorter or longer period, but a number of more or less diffuse engagements with people and technologies."

Læs mere om workshoppen her

http://www.dasts.dk/wp-content/uploads/Sit_Analysi_PhDcourse.pdf

Cross-disciplinary Ph.D. course in research ethics and science studies

(including history, philosophy and social studies of science)

Course leader: Tom Børsen, E-mail: borsen@nbi.dk

Dates: The week November 3.-7., 2008, every day from 9:15 to 16:00.

Location: Niels Bohr Institute, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø (room numbers will be announced).

The course is arranged by the Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies (CPNSS) at the University of Copenhagen. www.nbi.dk/~natphil/

Language: English.

Contents: The course presents actual theoretical discussions within ethics of science and science studies including philosophy, history and sociology of science, and has a special attention on technoscience, the norms and values involved in research training, and including a focus on selected themes from the participants’ Ph.D. projects. The course this year will focus on these five interrelated themes: (1) Old and new theories of science as an institutional system of knowledge production; (2) Norms, good practice and scientific dishonesty; (3) Science policy and changing universities; (4) The responsibility of scientists in research, development, public debate and advise.

The course aims at updating the participants’ understanding of concepts, theories, and perspectives from philosophy (including ethics), history and social studies of science, on a more advanced level than basic introductions given in bachelor programs (like the Danish course “Fagets Videnskabsteori”, i.e., basic philosophy of science). However, we acknowledge the fact that not all Ph.D.-students in science have yet taken such courses and thus, we put an emphasis on applied theory of science, taking departure from specific problems emerging in concrete instances of research.

Program and form: Information about the detailed program will appear after the sign-up deadline. The course consists of lectures, discussions, and participant workshops.
Course material: A compendium with texts (app. 220 pp. [A4, many of which are double text book pages) will be distributed before the course. This will be supplied by a textbook (in Danish or English) in science studies /philosophy of science, according to the individual participant’s speciality and language.

Preparation: Participants are expected to have read the compendium and to complete minor assignments before, during or after the course. Participants should reserve a full week course programme plus about 10 days work for preparation before the course and eventually, completing the paper assignment work after the course.

Teachers: Tom Børsen, Anders Frøslev Jensen and Claus Emmeche (CNV).

Specially invited lecturers 2008:

• Mathematics professor Vagn Lundsgaard Hansen (DTU), member of The Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (in Danish: Udvalgene vedrørende Videnskabelig Uredelighed);
• Political scientist, Dr.scient.pol. Karen Siune, director of The Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy (Dansk Center for Forskningsanalyse), Aarhus University;
• Philosophy professor Peter Kemp (Department of Philosophy of Education, The Danish School of Education, Århus University).

Number of participants: Max. 30, minimum 15.

Signing-up: Deadline October 15, 2008. You can mail Tom Børsen for a preliminary enrolment note to be sure to be included within the max 30 limit.

Credit / Merit:
• 2.5 ECTS credit for simple participation i.e., preparatory work plus active course participation (lectures, presentations, discussion sessions, in 5 days from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.);
The participants can apply for an expansion of the participatory mode, and hence receive additional ECTS points:
• 5 ECTS credit for participation as above, plus with an oral presentation based on a synopsis (an abstract);
• 7.5 ECTS for participation with an oral presentation, plus a paper assignment delivered in December (in Danish or English; detailed instructions will be specified) that will be evaluated by the course teachers.

The Subjectivity of Religious Reading

Thursday, September 25, 2008, 10:15-12:00

Lecture by Gavin Flood

Title: "The Subjectivity of Religious Reading"

Location: CFS, University of Copenhagen, lecture room 25-5-11, Njalsgade 140-142, 5th floor.

Gavin Flood is Professor and Academic Director of The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, University of Oxford. Among his numerous publications are: Beyond Phenomenology: Rethinking the Study of Religion and The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition. He is editor of The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism.

This lecture develops the idea that the act of reading is at the heart of religion and that religious reading entails the internalisation of tradition within subjectivity. Religious communities are formed through the repeated, ritual acts of reading, an idea which brings into question views that seek to explain religion without text. The lecture will discuss kinds of subjectivity formed through religious reading and how these interface with the political and social world.

The lecture is open for the public.

There will be a PhD workshop with Gavin Flood in the afternoon at 14:15 - 16:00, organized by the Research education programme: Religion & Society, University of Copenhagen and CFS. For further information, please see: http://frs.ku.dk/arrangementer/

Friday, September 26, 2008, 9.30 – 16.45

Colloquium: "Selfhood and Self-Annihilation

Location: University of Copenhagen, KUA, Njalsgade, Lecture room 27.0.09

What is the self implied in self-annihilation? The workshop will focus on the question of selfhood implied in notions of self-annihilation, and will do so in drawing on different religious traditions, in particular Christian mysticism and Buddhism.

Speakers:

George Pattison (University of Oxford): "Being, Nothingness and the Metaphysics of Salvation";
Gavin Flood (University of Oxford): "The Paradox of the Will in Christian and Buddhist Asceticism";
Ben Morgan (University of Oxford): "Meister Eckhart and the Pre-History of Modern Forms of Identity";
Jonna Bornemark (Södertörn University College, Stockholm): "Mechthild von Magdeburg and the Erotic Tension between Specificity and Self-Annihilation";
Joel Krueger (University of Copenhagen): "Forms of Self-Annihilation in Zen Buddhism"

For programme, abstracts, location please see here:
http://cfs.ku.dk/calendar-main/calendar2008/110522/

Prior registration required: Please register before September 15 by sending an email to cfs [@] hum.ku.dk

Organized by Arne Grøn, CFS.

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Further information about upcoming activities can be found at: http://cfs.ku.dk/calendar-main/
For information on courses, please see: http://cfs.ku.dk/courses/