2015 Secretary's Report
Over the past two years, my primary responsibilities have been managing the membership of the society, attending meetings and keeping a record of the Council's decisions and Membership discussions, editing the newsletter, forwarding list announcements and web content to the list manager and website editors, contacting Council Members concerning their responsibilities, forwarding calls for nominations and awards, running the election, and addressing any particular concerns that arise with respect to the society. Details are below. Here is a report on the Membership:
Active Members 2015
- Regular: 421
- Student: 201
- Emeritus: 40
Total: 664
Membership 2013
- 376 Regular
- 142 Students
- 46 Emeriti
Total: 539
Broken down by nationality:
- USA: 519
- (US (244) + USA (275))
- Canada: 92
- France: 39
- Germany: 23
- Mexico: 18
- Italy: 14
- UK: 13
- Brazil: 12
- Spain: 11
- Japan: 10
- Israel: 7
- Belgium: 6
- Austria: 4
- India: 4
- China: 3
- Korea: 1
- Hungary: 1
Publications Agreement:
I also spoke with Ties Nijssen about our agreements with Springer re: Journal subscriptions. Here is our current agreement, concerning the following journals: History of Biology, Biology & Philosophy, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, Acta Biotheoretica and Biological Theory
All journals are USD 50 excl VAT and Posting &Handling
All journals should be ordered and paid directly at Springer stating ISH membership via: http://www.springer.com/generic/order/journals+subscription?SGWID=0-40514-12-128793-0
If this does not work, people can e-mail Ties:
Journals only print, no electronic version
2015 Treasurer's Report:
The Society has substantial financial reserves at this point, (as of July 1: USD 137,685.) Meetings continue to be the main source of revenue, although membership registration and donations are also important. We also benefit from the 7 Societies NSF grant, which funds many of graduate student travel awards, and we are especially grateful for a generous donation from the Konrad Lorenz Institute to the Callebaut prize fund. Our primary expenditure is funding student travel, spending USD 33,170 on travel awards for ISHPSSB 2013 in Montpelier and for an off-year workshop.
2015 Operations Committee Report
Composition: Michel Morange (Chair) Linnda Caporael Andrew Inkpen Isabella Sarto-Jackson The operations Committe is charged with reviewing the operations of the Society in order to (1) determining if its activities are operating efficiently and recommend any improvement that seem desirable, (2) provide advice when items arise about changes in its operations, and (3) engage in long range planning to ensure the continued health and vitality of the Society.
Werner Callebaut had a precise project concerning the missions of the four-member Operations Committee. Isabella Sarto-Jackson, working with him at the head of the Konrad Lorenz Institute, and new member of ISHPSSB, was to look at the way the Society operated, pinpoint weaknesses in its organization. From her observations, Werner would propose the Committee a list of issues for which we would propose changes of the Operations.
This project was abruptly interrupted by the death of Werner, and we were unable to find any document that would have helped us to see the directions in which Werner wanted to modify the Operations of the Society.
Therefore, what we did was simply to revive a tradition that had been abandoned in recent years, and to ask each of the Committee Chairs to send a report of their activities during the period 2013-2015. These reports will be addressed to the Chairs of the 2015-2017 Committees to help them in their new tasks, and put on the website. In addition, we proposed that the Committees whose tasks are not precisely assigned by the Operations manual, such as the Membership Development Committee and the Education Committee, will have to describe, a few months after their nomination, the directions they want to explore, and the issues on which they intend to focalize their efforts.
We had also additional recommendations concerning three Committees: the Membership Development Committee, the Education Committee and the Publication Committee. Concerning the first, our conviction was that the most important issue was to favour interdisciplinarity, a conclusion also reached by this Committee. We considered that the Education Committee had to find a new dynamics and a new role, whereas the Publications Committee had to focus on the reorganization of the website and on communications: in both cases, our expectations have met those of the Council members, and these Committees have been reorganized in these directions.
2015 Membership Development Committee Report
Prepared Alan Love (Co-chair)
Members: Alan Love (Co-Chair), Emily Schultz (Co-Chair), Ingo Brigandt, Katherine Liu
Main goals
(1) Generate strategies for increasing the representation of history and sociology within the society
(2) Coordinate with program committee about the implementation of strategies that increase the representation of history and sociology within the society
Planned Events:
(1) History of Science Society, Graduate Student and Postdoc Breakfast – November 2013 (cancelled due to lack of financial support from Council)
Activities:
Pre-ISHPSSB2015, Montreal:
- coordinated with program committee to track distribution of disciplinary representation on iterations of the program
- coordinated with local organizing committee to have membership diversity meeting on the program
During ISHPSSB 2015, Montreal Events:
(1) MEMBERSHIP DIVERSITY MEETING (Wed, July 8th, 2-3pm)
Attendees: ~40
Facilitated a discussion of questions about how people perceive problems with diversity in the society and what kinds of strategies might be helpful (or harmful) in addressing them.
A report on the meeting with a summary of the ideas generated is appended as a separate report.
Post-ISHPSSB 2015, Montreal:
- organize regional action groups from new committee composition
- build a task list out of the strategies derived from membership diversity meeting
- implement strategies in various forms beginning mid-Fall 2015
ISHPSSB 2015, Membership Diversity Meeting Report
2:00 - 3:00 PM, DS-R515, Wednesday, July 8th
Attendance numbers: ~40 attendees
Interdisciplinarity has been central to ISHPSSB since its inception; as its name suggests, it aims to include historians, philosophers and social scientists that study biology. However, the proportion of members who are philosophers of biology has for some years been significantly greater than proportions of members from other disciplines. The consequences of this disproportion in disciplinary representation have raised concerns among historians and social scientists that have felt marginalized by some practices of the society.
This session at the 2015 meeting in Montreal was sparked by a conversation between Emily Schultz and Alan Love, members of the Council’s Membership Committee: Schultz (an anthropologist) had described her own experiences of marginalization, which were leading her seriously to consider not attending the 2015 meeting in Montreal, after having attended every meeting since 2005. However, Love suggested (and Schultz agreed) that a better solution might be to address the issue of disciplinary marginalization directly, by collecting statistics about paper submissions and by organizing a meeting on membership diversity to get input from other members about their own experiences and concerns. The program committee agreed, and the meeting became part of the 2015 program.
Alan Love began the meeting by sharing the statistics about organized and individual paper submissions by discipline for the 2015 Montreal meeting. (Note: these do not reflect final adjustments due to cancellations and failures to register.) Designations are self-assigned by those submitting session or paper proposals. Interdisciplinary includes sessions with scientists and therefore does not reliably pick out sessions that combine history, philosophy, and/or social studies. For example, Alan Love’s session was “Diverse Format” and “Interdisciplinary”, but was composed of one philosopher of biology, one philosopher of physics, and two biologists.
Standard Format Sessions
Total Entries = 291
Philosophy = 170
Interdisciplinary = 92
History = 29
Diverse Format Sessions
Total Entries = 32
Philosophy = 11
Interdisciplinary = 21
History = 0
Individual Paper Sessions
284 Total Entries = 284
Philosophy = 163
Interdisciplinary = 78
History = 34
Social Studies = 9
Next, in order to render these abstractions more concrete, Emily Schultz described the challenges she had encountered at ISH over the 10 years she has been a member. Love and Schultz then opened the floor to a wider discussion, asking about any additional diversity issues that might concern the members who were present, as well as any suggestions of changes they thought might help improve matters at future meetings. The goal was to collect these comments and communicate them to the program chairs so that they might take them into consideration early in the process of preparing for the next ISH meeting in 2017, as well as for the membership diversity committee to formulate new strategies. These comments will also be submitted to the Council, who may look them over and decide how they wish to proceed.
Comments and suggestions fell roughly in to the following categories, and are summarized below each heading.
PROGRAM
- One member began by urging everyone to resist blaming philosophers for this situation; the challenge applies to everyone, in his view. The imbalance is skewed heavily toward philosophy. But if there is a unique characteristic of ISH meetings, it is conversations across disciplines. Could organizers consider the following possibilities:
o A stronger rule about combination of disciplines in sessions?
o Requiring organized sessions to have some kind of multidisciplinary specialties? One gets the impression at some sessions that people are just talking to people in their discipline and have not thought about possibility that others outside their discipline are even there.
More than one attendee suggested the possibility of introducing formal quotas of some kind. For instance, sociologists have almost entirely disappeared from the program. One attendee added that ISH has tried to encourage multidisciplinary sessions, but it doesn’t work; maybe we need some kind of authoritarian percentage or proportion.
- Concern was expressed that STS people seem excluded by the heavy emphasis at ISH of hard analytical philosophy. This leads to a related concern that if things continue as they are, only philosophy of biology will remain—and maybe we can’t have both.
It was asked if the two plenary lectures had been intended to be by scholars who are not stereotypical analytical philosophers of science. The response was that this decision had indeed been intentional on the part of the program committee.
- Acceptance of papers. Council is aware of—and concerned about—the issues surrounding acceptance of papers. This is a difficult issue because an open acceptance policy has characterized ISH for a long time, and modifications to that policy might be challenging.
The attempt to bring many disciplines together seems resolvable by accepting pretty much any paper.
The issues of how open the meetings are, how much of each discipline is here, are tied together. The open program idea was “if it is about biology, that is enough.” The idea was that neither closure nor exclusion should become a policy. This openness has been what has made ISH the place it is. Maybe nobody would understand what you had to say, but at least you had a chance to talk.
- Organized sessions. One member observed that typically you organize your session with people you already know. Unless you are part of a group, you get left out. Could the program committee add an unknown individual submission from a different discipline to an organized session, to encourage additional participation and additional audiences?
A counterexample was offered by a philosopher who organized a session via e-mail, inviting two other individuals he did not know beforehand. They met for the first time at ISH, and each presented completely different perspectives on the topic: A Chinese perspective, an American perspective, and a French perspective.
In the past we have had active listservs, but they seem to have slowed down. Maybe we need to revitalize them, on the new website for instance. This could facilitate contact and session organizing across disciplines.
- Dividing up meeting days by discipline. For instance, perhaps there could be a 6-day meeting, with 2 days devoted just to philosophy and biology—i.e., a mini-PSA for philosophy of biology tacked onto the front or back of something more explicitly interdisciplinary. Another suggestion was a 2-day meeting on history separated from the rest of the meeting.
One attendee stated that historians of histology feel alienated. They need a critical mass of historians really doing their work. The worry is that if this task is left to the program committee, it won’t succeed.
One attendee was largely against hiving off a piece for historians or others, stating that nine-tenths of what is attractive about ISH is the crosstalk. Another attendee agreed that if the goal of the conference is to promote open discussion, to allow ideas to flourish, it would be counterproductive to have a segregated conference or quotas. If there are more philosophers, that is because they are the ones who are coming into the society.
- Might there be a preconference workshop on methodologies that might draw on historians or philosophers or STS people—and there would be an opportunity to profit from one another’s methodologies?
It was suggested that some of the philosophy sessions don’t really belong at ISH because they are very specialized, and that this kind of interest might be better served at an off-year workshop.
One member argued that the challenge is to allow a focus on disciplinarity—e.g., the history of the life sciences—as well as on the interdisciplinarity. We need both. This person liked the idea of separate days for different disciplines, or the idea of disciplinary workshops.
- Could there be a unified session at the beginning of the meeting—or a plenary with multiple participants—concerned with different disciplinary perspectives on the same problem? If this were to happen, the interaction might be stronger. A member who agreed that we might think we are using the same terms in the same way seconded this suggestion, but we are not. Might we focus on key terms and structure some discussions around these differences?
- Another suggestion was to say more about the mission statement of the society: if you are not interested in philosophy, not willing to have a conversation, maybe this isn’t the right conference to come to.
- One historian observed that all history sessions were scheduled at the same time, which was frustrating.
PRIZES
- It was suggested that submissions of nominations for the prizes was a very biased procedure. It was asked if we could partition the prize so it isn’t just between philosophy and history.
It was pointed out that the new Callebaut Prize is interdisciplinary.
RECRUITMENT
- The problem should not be stated as there being “too many philosophers.”
- A historian who came in 2005 participated in an organized session for which David Hull was the commentator, and he said it was wonderful. He was a recent Ph.D. and always wanted to come back, impressed by the friendliness and interdisciplinarity. He always walked away having learned something. He doesn’t want quotas, but he was recruited.
- Could we reach out to the STS community, asking them to come, maybe doing a plenary? We could reach out to STS departments, history and philosophy of science departments. Perhaps we could exchange free registrations with STS programs for sponsorship. If we really want an interdisciplinary focus, we need to put our dollars there.
- What could the guest status do for diversity, or as means for recruitment?
- If we recruit people as graduate students, they will want to come back. Many who first came as graduate students feel they got their start here. This generates bonds that are hard to reproduce otherwise. Maybe that is why philosophy has done well here.
A concern was raised about finding other venues for philosophers of biology. The PSA is more hospitable to non-analytic philosophers. Is there something structural about ISH?
- One person who presented his first paper at ISH observed that the people who commented on that paper are not present at this year’s meeting, which raises the question: how do we retain the people we have? This view was seconded by another member who said that recruitment was not enough. People who used to be regulars have stopped coming after 10 years.
- Funding may be an issue. Often it is not possible to go both to ISH and another conference, such as the HSS.
- Selectivity may also be an issue. It was pointed out that the PSA is every two years. Now there is philosophy of biology at Madison, but it is a very selective conference, hard to get into. HSS meets every year, and requires only an abstract, but the HSS turndown rates are high.
- What is happening may also reflects structural differences that have been pulling historians and philosophers apart. The member who pointed this out is now going more to small colloquia with historians who are discussing specialized topics.
- The issue of diversity is related to more than disciplinary diversity. Africa and Latin America are very underrepresented in ISH. Regional ethnic, racial, other kinds of diversity are also important for this reflection. This attendee said he would endorse priority issues for a postcolonial reading of history of biology, and to introduce this theme in the call for papers. This concern is also connected to the rationale about choosing meeting sites.
2015 Editorial Board Report
by Maria Kronfeldner
The Editorial board was suggested as part of the activities of the communications committee during the 2013-15 cycle. The main motivation was: There have been volunteers helping the secretary before too, but their work was not properly acknowledged at the webpage or anywhere else. Furthermore, the idea was that making the responsibilities explicit helps in keeping the operations in order.
Members: During the 2013-15 cycle, the editorial board included the following three volunteers: Carlos Mariscal (Webmaster), Trevor Pearce (Listserv editor), David Suarez (Newsletter editor). Anya Plutynski was part of it as secretary and Maria Kronfeldner as communications (aka publications) committee chair.
2015 Student Travel Report:
Members 2013-2015:
Laura Perini, Chair
Linnda Caporeal
Lynn Chiu
Rachel Brown
The Travel Committee’s main responsibility is to manage travel grants for graduate students presenting at ISHPSSB meetings. For the 2015 Montreal conference, we received 85 applications, and made 76 award offers. The amount of the awards vary, depending on travel expenses and other institutional support a student will receive. For the 2015 conference, the maximum award is USD 1000, with an average of $282. The expenses for the 2015 awards will be offset somewhat by the 8 Societies NSF grant, which will fund students who are US citizens or enrolled in US institutions.
2015 Communications Committee Report
by Maria Kronfeldner
Members 2013-15: Richard Burian, Silvia Caianiello, Michael Dietrich, Colin Garvey, Maria Kronfeldner (Chair), Manfred Laubichler, Sabina Leonelli, Shunkichi Matsumoto.
Important documents related to this:
- Dietrich report publication committee 2009-11
- Laubichler report (to Ana Barahona, date unclear)
- Agenda PC-committee (2014)
- Proposal to council regarding website relaunch
- Job description website relaunch
- Contract with website designer
At the beginning of the 2013-15 cycle, the committee received the so-called “Dietrich report” (2009-2011), specifying goals for the future of the society’s publications. These goals were transformed into practical steps towards a new division of labor (see editorial board) regarding the communications and publications of the society and a roadmap towards the relaunch of the society’s webpage that was often out-of-date, which has led to multiple complaints. After intense discussion among the communications committee members, a proposal was presented to council and the respective motion passed. This included the decision to hire a professional web designer since designing webpages is by now too labor-intensive so that to hand it over to volunteers was considered as inadequate.
The committee then issued a job description and contacted a list of web design services and asked for cost estimates. After blind review of the proposals by the committee members, one was chosen. A contract was issued by the treasurer. The reprograming was supervised by the chair of the committee, in close interaction with the secretary. As part of this, content got reorganized, the logo got revised and suggestions for further communications of the society (Facebook, Twitter, Blogs) were suggested. Since the new secretary, Sean Valles, is willing to try without associating an additional web editor, no such web editor will exist. The responsibility to oversee the development of the backend of the new site was handed over to the new secretary Sean Valles shortly before the meeting in Montréal. The Secretary also accepted to further discuss with the student advisory committee how to use Facebook, Twitter and a Blog. During the council meeting in Montréal it was also decided that the hired webdesigner will also be hired as a webmaster (see minutes of meetings). Finishing the re-launch of the society’s page within the 2013-15 cycle was not possible for various reasons and will thus continue into the 2015-17 cycle. The communications committee will hand over that responsibility at a suitable test stage to the editorial board of the site.
At the beginning of the 2013-15 cycle, another long-term and major goal of the communications committee was to develop initiatives so that the society can keep pace with the opportunities our digital world offers. Thus, the aim for the 2015-17 cycle was to try to find ways to support OA initiatives within the society and with journals of interest to the society. Since new rules for the access to such journals was negotiated by the treasurer independently during that cycle and no proposals for that goal were suggested, nothing in that direction happened. The goal might be taken up later, after the relaunch of the society’s page.
2015 Student Support Committee Report
Members: Lynn Chiu (Chair), Nina Atanasova, Ann-Sophie Barwich, Emily Parke
Main goals:
(1) increase networking/mentoring opportunities (especially for those new to the organization or do not have a group) during ISHPSSB
(2) collect useful feedback for the Council and for student event organization
(3) promote student travel funding & advocate for better funding procedures
(4) encourage submissions to the Grene Prize
Planned Events:
(1) Early Career Mentoring Lunch
(2) General Meeting
(3) Publication Workshop (cancelled due to time constraints and loss of faculty support)
Post-ISHPSSB2013, Montpellier:
Grene Prize: email ISHPSSB listsrv to encourage students to submit their work
Pre-ISHPSSB2015, Montreal:
Grene Prize: Email reminders to the listsrv
Travel Funds: After receiving some feedback from students about the deadline, Lynn requested the travel fund committee to extend the deadline.
Room Share: Email reminders about the room-share forum (http://ishpssb.onefireplace.com/page-602912)
ISHPSSB Spring Newsletter: Submit conference events to the spring newsletter
ISHPSSB2015 website: Submit event information and roomshare reminders to the ISHPSSB local committee for their website and registration email
New student committee chair recruitment: Lynn asked for private nominations and posted on the ISHPSSB general listsrv and in the Spring Newsletter of ISHPSSB recruitment ads. After receiving responses from three candidates, Lynn explained the duties of the ISHPSSB student chair/committee, and what it is like to work for ISHPSSB.
ISHPSSB 2015 Events: All members exchanged multiple emails throughout the two years to plan for the event. We held ~2 Skype meetings as well.
During ISHPSSB 2015, Montreal Events:
(1) EARLY CAREER MENTORING LUNCH (TUES NOON, JULY 7TH)
Attendees: Roughly 90 (140, based on brown-bag counts)
Mentor Recruitment Process: We put together the list based on the people we know and the people they know. The mentors were contacted by email around February. Based on our understanding of the mentors, we suggested the following themes.
Themes & mentors:
- Theme: Publishing in HPSS of Bio
Stuart Newman (New York Medical College)
Linnda R. Caporael (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)
- Theme: Interdisciplinary Training and Alternative Careers
Scott Gilbert (Swarthmore College)
Sandra Mitchell (University of Pittsburg)
- Theme: Interdisciplinary Careers in HPS of Biology
Staffan Müller-Wille (University of Exeter)
- Theme: Balancing Family Life With Academia
Sabina Leonelli (University of Exeter)
Rachel Ankeny (University of Adelaide)
- Theme: Careers in Phil of Biology /Interdisciplinary Careers
Denis Walsh (University of Toronto)
Jessica Bolker (University of New Hampshire)
- Theme: Job Search and Tenure
Andre Ariew (University of Missouri)
Angela Potochnik (University of Cincinnati)
- Theme: Women and Minorities in Academia
Anya Plutynski (Washington University in St. Louis)
Roberta Millstein (UC Davis)
Robert Skipper (University of Cincinnati)
Format: Each mentor group occupies a single room. The participants first convene at an auditorium before dispersing into each room. The discussion is entirely informal. The mentors may or may not talk about the assigned theme. Students may come and go to visit different rooms.
Lunch arrangements: brown bags for all registered attendees. ~170 in total registered for the event. The lunch was paid for and distributed by the local organizing committee.
Beverage arrangements: We spent roughly 30 Canadian dollars on extra water and coffee (as the coffee tables were already taken away).
Notes: it is important to have more than one mentor. The mentors had a great time bouncing ideas off each other and taking turns answering questions. The mentees got to see the mentors in action.
(2) GENERAL MEETING DISCUSSION & ELECTION (WED NOON, July 8th)
Attendees: roughly 30
Agenda:
(a) Travel funds discussion with the Treasurer
(b) Discussion Questions:
- What arrangements influence your exposure to relevant researchers and your opportunity to receive good feedback?
- What factors influence your career and research advancements at ISHPSSB?
(c) Election:
Candidates:
- Federica Turriziani Colonna, History and Philosophy of Science at the Center for Biology and Society, Arizona State University
- Cory Lewis, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science, and Technology, University of Toronto
- Kimberly Brumble, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University
Election Results: Federica (2), Cory (8), Kimberly (20)
Lunch arrangements: brown bags paid for and distributed by the local organizing committee.
Notes: We tried our best to get people to come, but the turnout was roughly the same, maybe even less, than two years ago.
Post-ISHPSSB 2015, Montreal:
Assist the next committee chair to conduct a general survey.
FEEDBACK AND SUGGESTIONS FOR THE NEXT COMMITTEE
From the General Meeting:
Written Survey (the survey results are with Kimberly):
(1) how many people attended your session?
(2) did you have a good experience?
(3) what could be done to improve the experience?
Discussion Results:
- Should ISHPSSB be more selective?
o Yes, spreading out the attendees does hurt grad student exposure
o No, grad-heavy sessions are actually supported by caring faculty. The feedback received in sections was warm and supportive.
o Yes, talks should be selective while posters are open to all
o No, do not introduce a two-tiered system
o Regardless, posters should be encouraged. Please strategize how to increase poster participation without degrading them to second-class.
o Posters are not good formats for historical subjects.
- What do you think of the Rule of Two?
o Given that there are already too many sessions, each person should play at most two roles (chair/presenter) but only present once.
- What do you think of this year’s schedule?
o Too many similar sessions at the same time.
o Suggestions: spread the sessions out with a classification system.
- Suggestions for History of Biology Outreach
o History of science/social studies of science departments are not aware of ISH: email them or send them a poster
Thoughts for the Next Committee:
- Publication Workshop: it is worthwhile to discuss appropriate journal articles for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology, and how dissertations can be turned into books.
- Mentoring Program:
o consider open recruitment of mentors
o some other themes to consider: US/European markets, grant-writing
o 2013 format, hosted by Emily Parke: panel of 5~6 mentors at different stages of their career in an auditorium
- HPSSB Journal list: there is high request for a list of recommended journals to publish in and why (who the audience is, what their impact factors are, etc)
- Faculty support: our committee did not have a faculty member due to unforeseen circumstances.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This committee benefited from early discussions with Werner Callebaut, received suggestions for the publication mentors from Isabella Sarto-Jackson. Most importantly, we are very luck to have the timely assistance of Mathieu Charbonneau, and the tremendous help and support of Christophe Malaterre.
2015 Report of Local Arrangements Committee
(PDF)
Members of the 2013-2015 Local Arrangements Committee: Christophe Malaterre (co- chair), Frédéric Bouchard (co-chair), Mathieu Charbonneau, Pierre-Olivier Méthot, Eric Muszynski, Martine Foisy (administrative assistant).
1. General overview of the tasks of the Local Arrangements Committee
The Local Arrangements Committee is in charge of planning, overseeing and implementing all local arrangements needed for the ISHPSSB meeting. More specifically, the 2013-2015 Local Arrangements Committee took care of the following items:
1.Budget, planning and reporting
2.Facilities
3.Catering and social events
4.Caring for special needs
5.Accommodation
6.Information dissemination
7.Program related tasks (in coordination with the Program Committee)
8.Registrations
9.Coordination with the other relevant ISHPSSB committees
2. The 2015 ISHPSSB meeting in Montréal
The 2015 meeting of the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology was held in Montréal on the campus of Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) from July 5th to July 10th , 2015. All of the sessions were held in a single building (building DS) except for the plenaries held in an adjacent building. The conference venue was within easy walking distance from most hotels and within easy access to public transport.
Attendance
This was the largest meeting yet with over 640 delegates from 35 countries. About 40% of attendees were students. Over the 6 days, some 530 papers were presented on a broad range of topics related to the philosophy, history and social studies of biology. In addition, two plenary sessions were organized (Sandra Harding and Ford Doolittle). See the report by the Program Committee for more details.
Budget, planning and reporting
Two years ahead of the meeting, we elaborated a preliminary budget that we kept working on and fine-tuned up to the very event. This helped keeping expenses under control while being realistic in terms of revenues. We successfully applied to the Canadian Research Council for event support grants, and were extremely lucky to find numerous and generous partners for the meeting. UQAM (with its Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie) was an exemplar host, and many institutions and departments provided the support that made the success of the meeting possible. Notably, most Canadian philosophy departments with a philosophy of biology component provided financial support for the meeting. A full list of our partners can be found here. Tracking real costs and revenues as soon as they were confirmed proved to be very useful, and helped prepare a specific financial report for the Society’s council shortly after the meeting. We also oversaw contractual and legal requirements (in particular between UQAM and ISHPSSB with regards to financial risk and liabilities, but also with suppliers such as caterers). The overall 2-year planning that we had put together for the event proved to be of great help in coordinating the different stakeholders and ensuring that the key tasks be realized on-time. Note that the tasks of the Local Arrangements Committee do not stop when the meeting is over but also include reports to funding agencies and to ISHPSSB.
Facilities
The Local Arrangements Committee oversaw the booking of the required number of conference rooms and auditoriums for the different parallel sessions (approx. 10 rooms with a capacity of 50, 4 rooms with a capacity of 70, and 4 auditoriums with capacities ranging from 90 to 220), the plenaries (2x, large auditorium with a capacity of 730), the council meetings (1 conference room), different committee meetings (incl. Membership diversity meeting, Student general meeting, Early career scholar mentoring lunch), and the Welcome event and the Society’s General assembly (both in the large auditorium). We also organized a book display attended by 5 editors and UQAM bookshop. In addition, we coordinated with UQAM audiovisual and IT services to insure the availability of proper audiovisual equipment in all conference rooms and the availability of wifi for all participants. Taking care of the facilities also included insuring on-site security (with UQAM police), implementing signage across campus, and offering guidance and support throughout the event thanks to our “blue-T-shirt” team.
Catering and social events
In addition to the academic meetings, we specifically organized four evening social events. Three of them were free for all participants (the “Welcome cocktail”, the “Poster session and cocktail” as well as the “Pub Night” during which was awarded the “Montréal best poster prize”). One evening social event demanded purchased tickets (the Dining Buffet/Banquet at the Salon Urbain, Place des Arts). All attempts were made to keep the price of the Dining Buffet as low as possible: we are happy to report that this increased student participation to this event (145 students out of a total of 325 banquet participants, i.e. 45%). Photo albums of these events can be found on Facebook here, here and here. Other catering arrangements were made to facilitate Council Meetings as well as the student meetings during the lunch breaks. We also provided coffee breaks throughout the meeting. Excursions (some of them open to the public in both English and French, some of them free of charge) were also provided (see here on the ISHPSSB 2015 website)
Caring for special needs
A certain number of participants require special attention. This is the case for mothers with young infants (technically, this could be the case for fathers as well, though none happened to come to us with any specific request this time). We thus offered a quiet room (in particular for breast-feeding) that was easily accessible during the meeting. We also provided information for daycare/babby-sitting options (relevant for approx. 12 participants). Another important point is to insure that the site is accessible for disabled persons and in particular wheelchairs. Finally, during the registration process, we asked whether participants add any specific dietary requirements, and we checked for allergies as well. This has helped us insure the availability of vegan plates at all social events (approx. 25) and of vegetarian meals (about 25% of total attendees).
Accommodation
Well ahead of time, we mapped the hotel offering nearby the conference venue, visited them and selected a few with which we negotiated early discount rates. We also insured the availability of affordable rooms in UQAM student residencies. We channeled accommodation information to participants vert early on through the conference website (see here) and let participants directly book for themselves.
Information dissemination
One of the most important tasks of the Local Arrangements Committee is channeling information to participants. In this respect, putting together a well-functioning website is key. We defined the visual identity and coordinated the development of the conference website, as well as its regular evolutions and updates, with UQAM audiovisual services (the website started online some 20 months before the event). This enabled us to offer information about travel, customs, local transportation, restaurants etc. very early on, as well as during the event itself. Therefore all of the information for the meeting (from submission to updates during the meeting) was provided on our main website http:// ishpssb2015.uqam.ca/ (with mobile version). In addition, we oversaw the development of a specific newsletter platform that enabled us to send specific information and updates to participants (in addition to the regular ISHPSSB newsletters). We also worked with UQAM press services to elaborate press releases and implemented communication through social media (Facebook page and Twitter account).
Program related tasks (in coordination with the Program Committee)
The duties of the Local Arrangements Committee are, in many respects, very closely related to those of the Program Committee, and precise coordination is needed on a number of key matters. In particular, we carried out the following tasks: defining the overall schedule of the event (see here); sending the call-for-abstracts worldwide; overseeing the development -by UQAM audiovisual services- of the online submission platform, abstracts evaluation platform and of the programming platform (used by the Program Committee to assign talks to sessions and prepare the raw data for the meeting program); overseeing the development -by UQAM audiovisual services- of the final online program interface (both for regular web browsers and mobile browsers, with search features – see here); coordinating the assignment of rooms for sessions; designing, preparing and printing the program booklet (including proof-reading and formating the data entered by participants on the online platform) as well as the book of abstracts (which we chose to charge at a cost of $10 so as to reduce paper consumption – 160 such books were ordered in total); insuring the availability of these documents online in pdf versions; tracking last minute changes (printing a last-minute-change addendum to the program; communicating last minute changes at the registration desk and via the social media).
Registrations
It is a specific task of the Local Arrangements Committee to handle registrations. This includes defining the registration fees (students/regular/non-member, early-bird/late, to which we added a reduced “visitor” fee to encourage local participation to the event), as well as overseeing the development -by UQAM audiovisual services- of the online registration and payment platform. We were careful to track registrations regularly as well as payments. One tricking point is to check ISH membership status by comparing registrations with the list of ISH members (provided by the Society’s Secretary). The Local Arrangements Committee also has the responsibility of organizing the registration desk during the event and of preparing the conference package/bag (including name- tags, pens, program booklet, book of abstracts, T-shirts for those who had pre-ordered such items, and give-aways).
Coordination with the other relevant ISHPSSB committees
While preparing for the event, we regularly communicated with the different ISH committees, in particular: with the Executive Committee for budget and legal aspects, for the organizing of the Welcome event and of the society’s General Meeting; with the Student Committee for the organization of the Graduate Student General Meeting and the Early Scholar Mentoring Lunch; with the Travel Support Committee for channeling information about student travel grants; with the David Hull Prize Committee, the Marjorie Grene Prize Committee and the Werner Callebaut Prize Committee for channeling information about the prizes and collecting donations (through the online registration platform).
3. Challenges and recommendations
a. Organizing such an event is a very heavy time commitment. It is important to make sure that proper resources are identified very early on (in our case a post-doc fellow, a doctoral student, and an administrative assistant, in addition to the two co-chairs). It is also important to agree on an equitable sharing of tasks very early on in the process, though it is unavoidable that a lot of the workload will in the end fall on the shoulders of the host, in particular due to the need to coordinate the different on-site stakeholders (IT, audiovisual, communication, catering, facilities, security, accounting, legal etc.). In any case, we can only encourage thorough planning activities, regular team meetings, and regular involvement of the different ISH committees.
b. The expectations of most conference goers for flexible and powerful submission and program platforms, and from program committees for a powerful scheduling platform have increased markedly in the last few years. In our case, all the platforms were developed by UQAM audiovisual services, under our direct supervision. A LOT of time and attention were spent with the platform developers for the submission platform (visible for conference attendees) and the program backend (visible to the program committee). In addition to the development of a scheduling module, searchable online program was developed, as well as an online version. We cannot emphasize enough how much effort and consideration needs to be taken with regard to the development of the digital platforms. There are no easy cheap fix for these issues: one way or another someone will have to spend a lot of time (and money) handling the information involved in over 500 submissions, over 600 attendees (e.g. who bought a T-Shirt? What size? Are they presenting? What information should be included on the nametag? Etc), in a complex multiple-concurrent sessions schedule with last minutes cancelations and room changes... We advise all future local organizers and council to think about the IT needs as quickly as possible.
c. Related to this challenge is the division of labor between Local Arrangements Committee and Program Committee. In our case the Local Arrangements Committee took it upon itself to work on the development of the submission platform (this simplified the elaboration of the final printed program and its online accessibility). And yet the submission platform interacts with Program Committee’s responsibilities (e.g. what categories/themes should the submission be filed under? which information should be requested from the participants?). Even with the best intentions and the most professional and cordial working relationship, the division of labor between the Program Committee and Local Arrangements Committee (or whoever is in charge of the IT development) is not always clear cut. In our case, we were working over skype conferences over 2 or 3 timezones, non-overlapping schedule availabilities, and with tight development deadlines. The council or the organizing committees should think about how to better coordinate or divide tasks in an efficient manner. We wish to thank the Program Committee for their time and effort: in the end we all came up with a great program on an easy-to-use platform. However, we do think some optimization is possible here (e.g. would it be a good idea for local and program committee to work from the same city?).
d. The council must be very clear about its budgetary expectations with local organizers. The Montréal Local Arrangements Committee achieved high revenue, many free social events, low registration fees, thanks to the very generous support of our numerous partners and the grants we managed to get. We worked hard to find these revenue streams, but we were also lucky that our partners were able to provide such generous support. The council needs to both provide guidance on its priorities (is it higher revenue or lower registration fees?) and allow for leeway for the local organizers to organize a pleasant meeting under the (very) local constraints they will work under.
4. Conclusion
The feedback survey that we had organized -as well as personal communications, tweets and Facebook comments- indicated an overall great satisfaction rate with regards to the local organization and hosting of the event. We are obviously very pleased with such outcome and wish to thank all the members of our team, the council, and our partners for their help and support.
2015 Site Selection Committee Report
By Roger Sansom, acting chair of the 2015 (ISHPSSB 2017) Site Selection Committee.
Michel Morange was chair of the ISHPSSB site selection committee and the other members were Matt Haber, Chris DiTeres, Charbel El-Hani, and myself (Roger Sansom). On 2/8/15, Michel sent out the two proposals that he had received, along with his request to remove himself from the committee because he had taken over as president of ISHPSSB at the death of Werner Callebaut. At that point I volunteered to become president of the site selection committee. Also, Charbel El-Hani recused himself because he was on one of the proposing local organizing committees.
We received one proposal to host in São Paulo and one in Jerusalem.
São Paulo Hosting Organizations:
- Institute of Biosciences of University of São Paulo
- Institute of Biosciences – USP
- São Paulo Local Organizing Committee:
- Charbel El-Hani
- (Federal University of Bahia)
- Maria Elice Brzezinski Prestes (University of São Paulo)
- Roberto de Andrade Martins (Federal University of São Carlos)
Jerusalem Hosting Organizations:
- The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
- Edelstein Center, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- Jacques Loeb Centre, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
- Cohn Institute, Tel Aviv University
- Jerusalem Local Organizing Committee:
- Ute Deichmann
- Anthony S. Travis
- Orly Shenker
- Ehud Lamm
The committee reviewed both proposals and met online a few times to discuss them. The committee judged both proposals to be sound, but had a number of questions for each of the organizing committees, which were put to the committees on Feb. 26 and they were asked to respond by March 12. Both committees were asked
- Is homosexuality outlawed at the proposed host jurisdiction?
- Can you give us any indication as to whether any ISH members may struggle to be allowed to enter your country?
Each committee was also asked questions specific to their proposals, such as clarifying budget or facility issues or about other conferences or institutions that were mentioned in their proposals.
After receiving the responses, the committee met again and made the following judgments about the relative strengths of the proposals.
- São Paulo would make the greater contribution to the internationalization and growth of ISHPSSB.
- São Paulo has the strength of running concurrent with one established conference (The 2017 Brazilian History and Philosophy of Biology Meeting (EFHB)) and just before another in Rio de Janeiro (The 25th International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine, to be held in from in July 23th to 29th).
- São Paulo would require ISHPSSB members from USA and Canada to get visas, through a process that is complicated, takes quite a lot of time, and is costly (for Canadians US$40, for Americans Tourist visas cost US$100; business visas US$160).
- Jerusalem would on average be less costly for ISHPSSB members to fly to.
- Israel would deny entry to any members from Iran or Pakistan.
The committee found both proposals to have very different relative strengths and so proposed that the decision be made by the whole membership at the general meeting at the conference in Montreal. Both proposing committees were invited to attend to make presentations at the meeting. However, it was later determined that this violated the ISHPSSB bylaws, which require that the council make the decision. ISHPSSB secretary Anya Plutynski asked me for a brief summary of the Site Selection Committee's deliberative considerations for her to forward to the Council. I sent her the following.
The committee found that both proposals were sound in terms of their budget and facilities. The São Paulo proposal had the advantages of dovetailing with other conferences that some of our membership would be interested in and also might attract their members to us. We also judged that while technically both were proposals from a new continent for Ish, the South American proposal increased geographical diversity more than the Israeli one.
There are two relative weaknesses for the Brazilian proposal. First, because Brazil has a reciprocity policy concerning visas, US attendees would be required to go through a process to get a visa that will take three months and cost more than $160. For Canadians it will be more than $60. It should be noted that a few of our members may be unable to get into Jerusalem, but that should not be the case for Brazil. However, the committee judged that although no one would be ineligible for Brazil, the process is sufficiently cumbersome that some would somehow not manage to get in, because they did not start the process early enough, made some other mistake, or something went wrong. In addition, flying to São Paulo will on average cost more than flying to Jerusalem.
That's it in a nutshell.
The committee voted in favor of the São Paulo option and they made their presentation at the ISHPSSB general meeting. In addition the committee presented its rationale for recommending the São Paulo proposal and explained some of the difficulties for US and Canadians to get visas and some of the helpful resources available on web etc.
I apologized to Ute Deichmann at the conference for the opportunity to make her Jerusalem presentation being taking away, because the decision in favor of São Paulo had already been made.
The committee would like to thank both organizing committees for their hard work and to request that other ISHPSSB members undertake that same hard work to allow for future successful ISHPSSB meetings.
2015 Off-year Workshop Committee report
By
- Akihisa Setoguchi (Chair)
- Lynn Chien-Hui Chiu
- Karola Stotz
The off-year ISHPSSB workshop 2014, "Changing Life in Times of Crisis", was held on May 17-21 at the Old Fire Station in Woods Hole Massachusetts, USA. There were 16 participants from 5 countries, including 8 graduate students. There were arguments on various topics such as regulation of biotechnology, philosophy of mind, and toxic chemicals and women's health. Please see ISHPSSB newsletter for further information: http://ishpssb.org/news-spring-2014/