Tag: Society for the History of Technology

Int’l scholars wanted: Society for History of Technology

Call for Nominations for International Scholars
Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), 2014

Each year the Society for the History of Technology designates up to four International Scholars for a two-year term. One of the goals of the International Scholars program is to foster an international network of scholars in the history of technology that will benefit all members of the Society. We particularly welcome applications from or nominations of scholars from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Graduate students, post-docs, and visiting scholars who are living and working in North America are not eligible to become International Scholars; however, they are eligible to apply once they return to their home countries.

Benefits and Support
International Scholars shall receive regular SHOT membership at no cost during their two-year term. At each annual meeting, SHOT will host a special gathering to welcome current International Scholars, introduce them to SHOT officers, and discuss with them SHOT’s international outreach and the international intellectual dimensions of our field.

International Scholars will participate in an email discussion list of all current International Scholars and the Internationalization Committee. Through the list International Scholars can seek support in writing paper abstracts for SHOT’s annual meeting and other activities in their task as ambassadors for the Society.

Conditions
As a condition of appointment, SHOT requires International Scholars to submit at least one paper proposal for SHOT’s annual meeting during their two-year term. While paper proposals from International Scholars will not automatically be accepted for the annual meeting, SHOT encourages the program committee to give these proposals special consideration.

SHOT also requires International Scholars to submit a travel grant application for each of the two SHOT annual meetings during the two years of their appointment. International Scholars receive highest priority for SHOT funding. Travel grant funds will help pay for travel expenses for International Scholars to attend the annual meeting and for basic conference registration, although not for lodging. For more information, please check the SHOT Travel Grant information page, available by link from either the SHOT annual meeting web page or the SHOT awards web page.

To inform the SHOT community about the state and developments of the history of technology in their regions, progress in disseminating information about the Society and stimulating scholarly activities in the history of technology, International Scholars commit themselves to at least one publication in the SHOT Newsletter or on the SHOT website.

Application
To nominate yourself or someone else as an International Scholar, please send a letter and a brief curriculum vitae to EACH member of the Internationalization Committee and to SHOT Secretary David Lucsko (shotsec [at] auburn [dot] edu). In the letter, please describe your goals in becoming a SHOT International Scholar, address the current state of history of technology in your home country and home institution, state how your position as a SHOT International Scholar will benefit the study of history of technology in your home country, and suggest what insights your research can bring to the SHOT community The deadline of 2014 nominations is April 15. New candidates will be selected and announced by the beginning of June. For more information about the application procedures, please visit our website.

2014 SHOT Internationalization Committee
Itty Abraham           (seaai [at] nus [dot] edu [dot] sg)
Sulfikar Amir           (SULFIKAR [at] ntu [dot] edu [dot] sg)
Francesca Bray     (francesca.bray [at] ed [dot] ac [dot] uk)
Yulia Frumer           (yfrumer [at] jhu [dot] edu)
Adam Lucas           (alucas [at] uow [dot] edu [dot] au)
Honghong Tinn       (hhtinn [at] gmail [dot] com)

History of Technology Fellowship

The Karen Johnson Freeze Fellowship Fund invites young and early career scholars in the field of history of technology in Central, Southeastern, and Eastern Europe to apply for funding. The fund is an initiative of the Foundation for the History of Technology (SHT) and the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT).

The Karen Johnson Freeze Fellowship Fund seeks to encourage scientific research and facilitate active participation of early career scholars in Central, Southeastern, and Eastern Europe, in particular in Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, the Ukraine, and Turkey.

The fund was established in memory of Karen Johnson Freeze, who broadened the perspective of the history of technology through the inclusion of Eastern, Central, and South Eastern Europe. She was responsible for the early contacts with young scholars in the region and pointed out existing preconceptions and biases, while bridging the scholarly divisions created as a result of Cold War politics. Through her efforts, the history of technology has begun to develop as a field in Central and Eastern Europe. Within Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), she served as a very active chair of the International Outreach Committee.

Who Should Apply? The Karen Johnson Freeze Fellowship Fund supports early career scholars preferably working in Central, Southeastern, and Eastern Europe in their pursuit of either pre- or postdoctoral research in the field of history of technology. The award may be used for travel and/or small stipends to provide a basic income for a few months. Through the fund, early career scholars will be allowed to attend international conferences or visit distant archives.

How to Apply? Send an application to the Foundation for the History of Technology. In your application you should include:
a research statement about your ongoing or future research (2-3 pages)
a description of how you plan to use the Karen Johnson Freeze Fellowship within the context of your work (1 page)
your curriculum vitae
a reference letter of someone knowledgeable about your work
Please, send your application by regular mail or e-mail to:
Foundation for the History of Technology
Dr. Jan Korsten, Business Director
C/o Eindhoven University of Technology
IPO-Building 2.31
P.O. Box 513
5600 MB Eindhoven
The Netherlands

Application Deadline: Two fellowships will be awarded annually. The next application deadline is July 31, 2012. The 2012 fellows will be announced during the Tensions of Europe / SHOT meeting in Copenhagen, October 3-7, 2012.

Selection Committee: Fellows are selected by a committee consisting of Prof. Dr. Luda Klusakova (Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic), Prof.Dr. Ruth Oldenziel (Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands), Dr. Dobrinka Parusheva (University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria) and Prof. Dr. Steve Usselman (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA).

What are the conditions? A Karen Johnson Freeze Fellow will be granted an award of a maximum of €2,000.–. The expenses will be paid directly to the fellow after submission of a statement of expenses and the original receipts. In emergency cases, an advance payment may be available. Expenses are refunded in accordance with the regulations of the Foundation for the History of Technology.

Fellows are required to publish a report/article in the Tensions of Europe Newsletter and the SHOT Newsletter. Additionally, the Fellows will be offered the opportunity to publish their report in the Tensions of Europe Working Paper series.

CFP Information identities

CALL FOR PAPERS
SIGCIS Workshop 2012
Information Identities: Historical Perspectives on Technological and Social Change
Sunday October 7, 2012 – Copenhagen, Denmark

DEADLINE for submissions: 15 June 2012

The Society for the History of Technology’s Special Interest Group for Computers, Information and Society (SIGCIS) welcomes submissions for a one-day scholarly workshop to be held on Sunday, October 7, 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark.  As in previous years, SIGCIS’s annual workshop will be held at the end of the SHOT annual meeting on the day that SHOT has reserved for SIG events.

SIGCIS invites proposals that examine the relationships between computer and information technologies and changes to individual and/or group identities, such as those shared by a nation, company personnel, or members of a virtual community. Such papers might consider:
* Specific ‘information identities,’ a term that we invite scholars to interpret broadly and creatively than has been articulated in the recent or distant past
* Relationships between information technologies and political change
* The rhetoric and discourses of globalization that have been linked to information and computer technologies
* National identity and its relation to information technology
* National and transnational strategies for joining or creating an information society, a network society, an information economy, or related concepts
* Transnational and international organizations, such as IFIP, UNESCO, the European Union, or standard-setting committees.
* Ways in which particular information technologies acquired new meanings and fulfilled new roles through interaction with local practices and identities
* The emergence of new kinds of community and identity around information technologies.

SIGCIS encourages submissions along these and similar lines of inquiry, but it also maintains a proud tradition of welcoming all types of contributions related to the history of computing and information, whether or not there is an explicit connection with the annual theme.  Our membership is international and interdisciplinary, and our members examine the history of information technologies and their place within society.

Proposals for entire sessions and individual presenters are both welcome. We hope to run special sessions featuring dissertations in progress and other works in progress. The workshop is a great opportunity to get helpful feedback on your projects in a relaxed and supportive environment. All proposals will be subject to a peer review process based on abstracts.

All submissions should be made online via the SIGCIS website.  Limited travel assistance for graduate students and other scholars without institutional support is available.  Questions about the 2012 SIGCIS workshop should be addressed to Andrew Russell (College of Arts & Letters, Stevens Institute of Technology), who is serving as chair of the workshop program committee. Email arussell@stevens.edu.

SHOT Travel grant

Pam Laird Research Grant for the History of Communication Technologies
Deadline: August 31, 2011

The Mercurians, a Special Interest Group of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), is offering the Pam Laird Research Grant, a travel grant of US$1,000 to defray the cost of travel and housing to use a research collection.

The Mercurians began meeting in 1986 for the purpose of generating networks between people who share work and interests in the history of communication technologies, defining the field broadly. Our activities include publishing a semi-annual newsletter, Antenna, meeting during annual SHOT conferences, organizing paper sessions for SHOT meetings, and pursuing contacts between meetings via our Google Groups list. The newsletter serves both as a clearing house for readers and an informal
forum for their ideas.

We have added this new initiative to encourage and reward high-caliber research in the history of communication technologies. One of the Mercurians’ missions is to encourage scholarship in the history of communication technologies. There is no travel grant program (either within or outside SHOT) that we are aware of dedicated to supporting scholarship on the history of communication technologies. While the history of communication technology literature is vast and always growing, the quality of the research effort or resulting publication too often falls short of scholarly expectations.

The travel grant is awarded in alternating years. We anticipate presenting the first travel grant during the SHOT annual meeting November 3-6, 2011, in Cleveland.

Eligibility
The grant is intended for and limited to junior scholars meaning either current graduate students or recent postgraduates (no more than three years beyond the terminal degree in their field).

Requirements and Application
Only travel to an appropriate archival collection to carry out research on an aspect of the history of communication technology, broadly defined, will be supported. The archive can be open to the public, private, or even closed, provided that necessary permissions have been obtained from the archive.

Complete the application form and e-mail it and a curriculum vitae (no longer than 3 pages) as attachments to the Mercurians. Your curriculum vitae should include pertinent publications, fellowships, or accomplishments relevant to your proposed research, and professional societies and affiliations.

The deadline for submitting an application for the inaugural grant is August 31, 2011.

For further information or questions, please contact Andrew Butrica.

Andrew J. Butrica
MERCURIANS
ANTENNA Newsletter

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