WTMC Writeshop 25 October 2019
On Friday 25 October 2019, in new location the Social Impact Factory, WTMC will organize the next Writeshop. The Writeshop is meant for WTMC members who are in the final phase of their PhD.
The Writeshop is a splendid occasion to receive comprehensive comments on your own work, but also to read work of your fellow PhD candidates. By carefully reading the work of others in order to give feedback you can learn a lot about writing. At the Writeshop we also discuss more general issues around finishing dissertations, and what to do with them once they are done.
We are very happy to announce that Kornelia Konrad will act as our senior discussant this time. In case of more than 5 registrations, Tsjalling Swierstra will join her.
Kornelia Konrad is Assistant Professor of Anticipation and Assessment of Emerging Technologies at the University of Twente. Amongst others, she studies the role of anticipation in innovation. Further fields of research are socio-technical change, socio-technical transitions, innovation ecosystems, and the role of use and users in innovation. She has developed tools for facilitating responsible research and innovation (RRI) in technology research and development and studied conditions for RRI in different modes of innovation.
She has an M.A. degree in sociology, physics and mathematics from the University of Freiburg i.Br., and her PhD from the University of Darmstadt. Before joining the UT in 2009, she worked at EAWAG, a research institute of the ETH domain, Zürich (CH).
She served for many years as secretary-treasurer of the executive committee of the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies (S.NET) and is member of the teaching committee of the Netherlands Graduate Research School of Science, Technology and Modern Culture (WTMC).
Tsjalling Swierstra is Professor of Philosophy at Maastricht University. His field of interest is the ethics and the politics of new and emerging science and technology (NEST). He has published on moral controversies regarding cloning, new reproductive technologies, genomics, food technologies, nanotechnology, synthetic and system biology, artificial gametes, neuroscience, and converging technologies. The philosophical problematic driving his research is: how to analyse, evaluate, and anticipate the mutual shaping of science and technology, and ethics and politics? And how to make this anticipatory knowledge regarding ‘technomoral change’ available to technologists, policy makers, and the larger public? As part of this endeavour he has authored reports and developed ‘technomoral’ scenarios for several public engagement events regarding genomics, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology.
The idea of the Writeshop is as follows. Each participant sends in a draft chapter or article that will be part of the PhD manuscript. Authors are also invited to provide a short (i.e. 2-300 words) contextualization of the draft. During the meeting, two discussants provide comments – a fellow participant and our senior discussant. The author then has an opportunity to respond to these comments before the discussion is opened to everyone. Each paper is discussed for a total of 55 minutes.
This Writeshop will be chaired by Bernike Pasveer [email protected]) and/or Anne Beaulieu ([email protected]), the PhD programme coordinators of WTMC.
The word limit for contributions is 10,000 words. The manuscript must be academic work-in-progress (i.e. not already published). Do not worry if your text is not perfect yet: this is precisely why you would want to discuss it in this forum. The draft should be well enough developed so your readers can understand the argument and the material, in order to get more specific and helpful feedback. Make sure your paper includes a short introduction which explains how the piece fits into your PhD, which journal you plan to send it to, or any other relevant details to help the reader understand the text. Depending on the number of participants, the day may last from 10 AM until 5 PM, to be followed by an informal dinner (paid for by WTMC). Dinner is usually finished by 8 PM.
Contributions must be sent to Elize Schiweck ([email protected]) by 11 October 2019 latest. She will then distribute all chapters/articles and send them to participants prior to the meeting so that everyone has time to read all of the chapters.
To reserve your place, please complete this form no later than Friday, 27 September 2019.
