Gender, Science and Wonder

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue951 30 October–29 November 2015

Gender, Science and Wonder
11-12 February 2016, Australian National University

 

 

Call for papers:
Please submit abstracts and brief biographies to achel.morgain@anu.edu.au
Deadline for abstracts: 15 December 2015

nquiries:
Dr Rachel Morgain achel.morgain@anu.edu.au
CAP Department of Gender, Media and Cultural Studies
Dr Trang Ta x.ta@anu.edu.au
CASS School of Archaeology nd Anthropology

Registration:
http://tinyurl.com/ genderscience

Full details at:
genderinstitute.anu.edu.au/ gender-science-and-wonder

 

How do science and technology make us wonder? And how do gendered understandings figure into our
wonderings? More often seen as the domain of art or religion, wonderment offers underexplored
territory with respect to science and technology, and the ways in which both scientists and
non-scientists respond to the worlds and possibilities opened up through science. The theme of
wonder loosely draws together threads of knowledge making and the workings of the world with
questions of ethics, curiosity and awe. At the same time, it draws attention to processes of
wondering, and therefore to how our approaches to science shape how knowledge is produced and how
sciences and technologies are forms of world making.
This postgraduate workshop, sponsored by the ANU Gender Institute, aims to open up a conversation
across the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities on the gendered dimensions of scientific
and technological knowledge. It will explore how institutional, social and technical practices
engender science, speaking to pressing questions of women’s participation in the STEM disciplines.
But it also takes questions of gender and science beyond demographic and institutional factors,
into the kinds of gendered understandings and imaginaries that are fostered by and shape knowledge
in science and technology.
Topics discussed may include but are not exclusive to the following:
• Gender inclusion and gender diversity in science and technology practices
• Gendered dimensions of knowledge and wonder in science
• Ethnographies and social studies of gender, science and technology
• Science and gender in the arts, design and religion
• Gender and environmental change
• The gendered dimensions of Indigenous and non-Western forms of science/knowledge,
particularly from Australia, Oceania and Asia
• Postcolonial contestations of gender, science and technology
Proposals for presentations are invited from postgraduate students, early career and established
researchers across all disciplines.
Please submit abstracts of 250 words along with a brief biographical statement including your
current position by 15 December 2015.