2021 Election procedure and candidate biographies

On behalf of the Nominations Committee, welcome to the 2021 ISHPSSB elections of officers. Below you will find the slate of candidates for all officer roles, followed by their biographies and photos. In accordance with the Society’s by-laws, we solicited nominations from the membership at large. Those nominated by two or more members, or by the Nominations Committee, and who have expressed their willingness to serve now comprise the slate. Our sincere thanks to all who have agreed to be nominated. The elections will be conducted electronically using a Qualtrics survey: All members actively subscribed on the Day of Record will be able to vote, during the month the ballots remain open. At the start of the balloting period, each will receive an email sent by Qualtrics in the name of the acting Past President, Marsha Richmond; in that email is a unique link allowing that member to submit their votes (once), without needing their membership password. (Please do check your SPAM folder if you haven't received this email after the start of the elections!)

Nominees

Nominee biographies

For President-elect:

Giovanni Boniolo

Giovanni Boniolo has a doctoral degree in Physics and in Philosophy, and is Full Professor of Philosophy of Science and Medical Humanities, at the Department of Neuroscience and Rehabilitation (University of Ferrara, Italy). Honorary Ambassador of the Technische Universität München. President of the Accademia dei Concordi (Rovigo, Italy). Scientific Director of the Civitas Vitae Research Centre. (Padova, Italy). Co-Editor in Chief of History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences. Series Editor of Springer Briefs on Ethical and Legal Issues in Biomedicine and Technology. Homepage: http://docente.unife.it/giovanni.boniolo

His work, now in the fields of the philosophy of biomedicine and its ethical implications, is witnessed by 13 books (plus 12 books edited) and about 240 papers, most of which appear in international peer reviewed journals. The two most recent books are: G. Boniolo, V. Sanchini (eds.), Ethical counselling and medical decision-making in the era of personalized medicine (2016); G. Boniolo, M. Nathan (eds.), Philosophy of Molecular Medicine (2016). His motto for ISHPSSB is “Diversity and Openness.”

Matt Haber

Matt Haber is a philosopher of biology at the University of Utah, which he joined in 2006 after completing his PhD at UC Davis. He has chaired the Department of Philosophy since 2015, and in 2019 introduced an interdisciplinary major in Philosophy of Science. His research is on conceptual and methodological issues in phylogenetic systematics. Joining ISHPSSB as a graduate student, Haber has been actively serving on committees ever since. This includes co-organizing the first off-year workshop in 2004 and co-hosting the 2011 meeting in Salt Lake City. He currently chairs the virtual local organizing committee for the 2021 meeting.

Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis

Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis is Professor of the History of Science, Department of Biology and Department of History, UF Biodiversity Institute and Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies, at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA. Her interests center on the history, philosophy and social study of evolutionary biology, genetics, botany, and anthropology, especially as they converge in the evolutionary synthesis. She has been both inspired and enabled by ISHPSSB since 1982 when she attended the first workshop as a beginning doctoral student at Cornell University. Since then, she has been continuously involved in the society, and keen to serve its interests as elected officer and organizer. If elected its President, she would bring her love of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives and forty years of institutional memory to its service as we move forward. As a recent student of migration studies, ethnicities and race in transnational contexts, and as a diaspora Greek from Egypt, educated in Canada and the United States, she would uphold our international commitments, and bring even greater geopolitical inclusion and linguistic and ethnic diversity to our society. She would continue to foster a supportive environment for junior scholars, women, and people of color, and people from marginal communities with diverse cultural experiences; and she would work at growing our endowment providing subsidies to the under resourced and to support meetings in affordable international settings with sustainable practices.

For Council (select up to three):

Maria Elice de Brzezinski Prestes

Maria Elice de Brzezinski Prestes is Associate Professor at the Department of Genetics and Evolutionary Biology of the Institute of Biological Sciences of the University of São Paulo. Trained in Biology and History of Science, she specialized in eighteenth-century natural philosophy researching archives at Paris, Montreal, Bloomington, and Chicago. She published A investigação da natureza no Brasil Colônia (The investigation of nature in the Colony Brazil) in 2000 and co-edited Teaching Science with Context: Historical, Philosophical, and Sociological Approaches (Springer, 2018).

She is editor of the online peer-reviewed open-access journal Filosofia e História da Biologia (Philosophy and History of Biology), a publication of the Brazilian Association of the Philosophy and History of Biology, ABFHiB, created in 2006. ISHPSSB certainly was one of the inspirational drivers for the creation of ABFHiB. The first ISHPSSB Meeting Maria Elice attended was in Guelph, 2005. In Montpelier's ISH Meeting in 2015, she had the satisfaction of getting acquainted with Werner Callebaut. Together with the co-founder of ABFHiB, Charbel El-Hani, Callebaut encouraged her to host the 2017 ISHPSSB Meeting in São Paulo. Unfortunately, Callebaut left us before he could witness his proposal carried out in Brazil.

Jaehwan Hyun

Jaehwan Hyun is an assistant professor of Science and Technology Studies at Pusan National University. He received his PhD in History of Science from Seoul National University in 2018. Jaehwan worked at the UCLA Institute of Society and Genetics (2017–2018) and the MPIWG (2018–2020).

His research interest lies in the intersection of the history of biology and environmental history. Now he is working on the history of human biology and environmental sciences with a focus on transnational connections between South Korea, Japan, and the United States after World War II. He joined ISHPSSB in 2019 and enjoyed the interdisciplinarity and openness of the conference in Oslo.

Abigail Nieves Delgado

Abigail Nieves Delgado is originally from Mexico. She is an assistant professor at Utrecht University. Prior to that she worked at Wageningen University, Ruhr University Bochum, and UNAM, Mexico.

Her research focuses on the history and philosophy of the biosciences, including physical anthropology, ethnobiology, microbiology, and race, especially in Latin America. She aims to contribute to a more inclusive academia through topics such as decolonization, transdisciplinary knowledge production, and epistemic justice. She gave her first international talk as a PhD student at ISH in 2013, and since then she is proud to be part of such a diverse, intellectually stimulating, and friendly community. It would be a great pleasure and honor to contribute to the society as part of the Council. Homepage: https://www.uu.nl/staff/ANievesDelgado

Thomas Reydon

Thomas Reydon is a philosopher of biology with primary research interests in evolutionary explanations; applications (and abuses) of evolutionary thinking in the social sciences, economics and the humanities; natural history; and classification, species concepts and natural kinds. He joined ISHPSSB in 2001, the second year of his PhD at Leiden University, and has been an active member of the society and enthusiastic participant in the biennial meetings ever since.

Jobwise, he is a professor in the Institute of Philosophy and the Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences (CELLS) at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. He is also Associated Faculty in the Socially Engaged Philosophy of Science (SEPOS) group at Michigan State University and an elected Fellow of the Linnean Society of London. He is a co-founder of the German Society for Philosophy of Science (GWP), a member of the Steering Committee of the European Advanced Seminar of the Philosophy of the Life Sciences (EASPLS), Co-Editor in Chief of the Journal for General Philosophy of Science, Co-Editor in Chief of the Springer book series “History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences,” and a former Associate Editor of the journal Acta Biotheoretica. Homepage: https://www.reydon.info

Judy Johns Schloegel

Judy Johns Schloegel is an independent scholar working near Chicago. Her research focuses on history of biology, genetics, and the environment in the US in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is preparing a book manuscript centered on the American pragmatist and geneticist, Herbert Spencer Jennings and several studies of the history of science and environment of the Great Lakes. Judy was the first recipient of the ISHPSSB Marjorie Grene Prize (1997).

She serves the profession generously: she currently serves on the ISHPSSB Operations Committee and Membership Diversity Committee; she has served on the ISHPSSB Ad-hoc Respectful Behavior Committee, the ISHPSSB Nominating Committee, the ISHPSSB Program Committee, and the ISHPSSB Marjorie Grene Prize Committee. She is currently serving a four-year term as Member-at Large for the Section on History and Philosophy of Science of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She also is currently serving on the Respectful Behavior Committee for the History of Science Society. She has served on Council and Nominating Committee for the History of Science Society and co-chaired the Women’s Caucus of the History of Science Society, among other roles.

Ana Soto

Ana Soto is a theoretical and experimental biologist. She is a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, and a Fellow at the Centre Cavaillès, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris (ENS). Her research interests include the control of cell proliferation, the biomechanics of morphogenesis, the developmental origins of adult disease, and theoretical and epistemological topics pertaining to biological autonomy and organization.

In partnership with Professor Carlos Sonnenschein, they posited that the default state of cells in all organisms is proliferation and proposed the Tissue Organization Field Theory of Carcinogenesis, in which cancer is viewed as development gone awry (The Society of Cells, Bios-Springer-Verlag, 1999). As the Blaise Pascal Chair at the ENS (2013–2015) she coordinated a multidisciplinary working group devoted to the elaboration of a theory of organisms (Soto, AM, Longo, G Noble, D, editors: From the century of the genome to the century of the organism: New theoretical approaches. Prog. Biophys. Mol. Biol, 122:1, 2016).

She has been elected a member of the prestigious Collegium Ramazzini, Carpi, Italy in 2011. She is a recipient of several honors, including the 2012 Gabbay Biotechnology & Medicine Award of Brandeis University, presented to her, Dr. Sonnenschein and Dr. Hunt for their contributions to public health, and in 2019 she was awarded the Grand Vermeil Medal, the highest distinction from the City of Paris, for her pioneering role in the discovery of endocrine disruptors.

Since 2005 she has enthusiastically participated in the biennial ISHPSSB meetings. She has served in the Program Committee and she looks forward to contributing to our Society goals as a Council Member.

For Secretary:

Sarah Roe

Sarah Roe is Assistant Professor at Southern Connecticut State University. She received her PhD from the University of California, Davis under the support and supervision of Professor Roberta Millstein. Sarah is an active council member for the American Association for the Advancement of Science-Pacific Division, where she serves as chair for History and Philosophy of Science. She also serves as the junior co-chair to the Philosophy of Science Women’s Caucus and is the Director of the Research Center on Values in Emerging Science and Technology. Sarah’s research interests include philosophy of medicine, philosophy of biology, and science and values. Much of her current academic research, in some way, emphasizes or focuses on minority and at-risk populations. Sarah is the proud recipient of the J. Philip Smith Award for Outstanding Teaching.

For Treasurer:

Stuart Glennan

Stuart Glennan is the Harry Ice Professor of Philosophy at Butler University. His research has focused on the nature of mechanisms and causation, as well as on explanation and modeling. He is interested generally in questions about how to represent and understand the structure of multilevel biological systems and processes operating on differing scales of size and time. A twenty-year veteran of ISHSSB, he has served on several committees and as chair of the off-year workshop committee. He brings considerable administrative experience — seven years as a department chair and 10 years as an associate dean — which he could put to use in the role of treasurer. ISH has nurtured him, as it has so many, and he would be pleased to serve the society and its members.

Don Opitz

Don Opitz (he/his) is Associate Professor at DePaul University, where he teaches in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, Department of History, and LGBTQ Studies Program. His research engages science and culture in the British Empire, gender and science, and queer studies. He serves as editor-in-chief of Endeavour, editor of the topical collection “Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Biology” of the Journal of the History of Biology, and a general editor of the series, Gender, Colonialism, and Science: A Cross-Culture Compendium of Primary Sources (Routledge, forthcoming). Opitz currently serves as co-chair of HSS’s Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, and secretary of the Commission on Women and Gender Studies, DHST/IUHPST. He has been a member of ISHPSSB since 2005, and currently serves on its Travel Support Committee. Opitz loves numbers: prior to receiving his PhD in history of science and technology, he earned his BS in mathematics and physics.

For Program Co-chairs:

Jan Baedke

Jan Baedke is a Junior Professor at the Department of Philosophy I, Ruhr University Bochum. His research is characterized by an integrated and interdisciplinary approach to the history and philosophy of the life sciences, with a special interest in evolutionary biology, epigenetics, Evo-Devo, and microbiology. He also works on societal challenges of the biosciences and the concept of race. He recently started a research group called “ROTO” (The Return of the Organism in the Biosciences: Theoretical, Historical, and Social Dimensions).

He has published in journals such as Biology & Philosophy, Journal of the History of Biology, and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C. His recent book is Above the Gene, Beyond Biology: Toward a Philosophy of Epigenetics (2018). The first ISH meeting he attended as a PhD student was in 2011 in Salt Lake City, and he has been a fan ever since. Websites: https://www.rub.de/philosophy/wtwg and https://rotorub.wordpress.com

and

Tatjana Buklijas

Tatjana Buklijas is a historian of biological and medical science with interest in the disciplines studying human development, reproduction and environment, as well as science and nationalism, science and democratic innovation. Her most recent article is and she is currently writing a book on the history of epigenetics and editing a special issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science on The concept of environment in biology and medicine. She is working at the University of Auckland as Senior Lecturer in Global Studies and Associate Director of Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures.