July 13, 14, 15, 19, & 20
Due to the pandemic, this conference was held virtually ‘at’ —with technical conference support graciously offered by— Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), on July 13, 14, 15, 19, and 20, 2021. We several hundred participants from some forty countries, one-quarter of whom are tenured faculty and one-quarter of whom are graduate students, and with the other half reflecting a broad range of other scholars in our capacious field. With over one-third of the conference sessions self-identified as interdisciplinary, the spirit of ISH is alive and well!
At the core of the conference were familiar ISH events: traditional sessions; panels and other ‘diverse-format’ sessions; plenaries (see below for more details); general meetings for conducting Society business and awarding prizes; even a banquet. In response to our present pandemical predicament, the conference will also include a variety of ‘community-building’ sessions, e.g., icebreakers and happy office hours, professional development skill building sessions, and opportunities for network building. In light of ‘Zoom fatigue’ and to provide an easy way to present new ideas, we have also added lightning talks.
Conference programme
The program is still available for download.
Time zone
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is on Eastern Standard Time. The links tells you the current local time (and a guess of the difference with 'your' time, based on your IP address or system clock). This may be worth double-checking, because it's not an in-person meeting, where a look on your phone will tell you the right local time.
ISHPSSB 2021 Resources
A range of conference resources has been developed, including
- the Quick & Simple 5-Step Guide to Enjoying ISH2021
- a ‘cheat sheet’/template for the start times of talks and breaks
- instructions to chairs and presenters
- a guide for new grad student members
- a twitter style guide
- a social media and recording etiquette guide
- an invitation to help create the conference soundtrack that will be played
- an invitation to participate in the virtual and glocal conference banquet
- a virtual gathering space that will be open throughout the meeting and used for other social events (see their quick ref guide).
The main platforms will be Zoom and Slack, with each Zoom session provided with its own Slack channel so that participants can share thoughts in real time. (For those unfamiliar with Slack, it’s like a private version of Twitter or a chat room. Slack access will be free with registration and provided by CSHL.) The day before the conference (July 12), there will be a practice day for presenters, so that everyone can get used to the technology and session protocol.
If session participants opt in, sessions will be recorded and made available to registrants for viewing up to 31 July. It’s hoped that this feature will help colleagues in disparate time zones enjoy talks without having to get up in the middle of the night. It can also potentially solve a familiar problem of in-person conferences: the need to miss talks that interest you because they are scheduled at the same time as other talks that interest you!
ISHPSSB 2021 plenaries
Open Science, Data Sharing, and Solidarity: Who Benefits?
Time: Wednesday, July 14, 9:30–10:55 EDT
Organizers: Ciara Staunton and Andrés Barragan
Panelists: Stefano Canali, Calvin Ho, Sabina Leonelli, Matthew Mayernik, Barbara Prainsack, and Ambroise Wonkam
Chair: Katherine Littler
Research, scientific progress, and innovation are increasingly contingent on access to large quantities of data. Owing in part to the value of this data, life scientists are encouraged —and often required as a condition of funding— to share their data. The ‘open science’ movement has thus gained momentum and fosters the sharing of personal data, datasets, and research results. In such a context, research participants are encouraged to consent to the sharing of their genetic materials on the basis of solidarity (understood as support for a greater good), and researchers are encouraged to share their data on the basis that it can maximize the use of a valuable resource, and also lead to more reproducible science. It thus seems commonsensical that in our roles as citizens, patients, and researchers, we participate and share data on the basis of solidarity and the public interest.
Questions must nevertheless be asked about the benefits from this wide sharing of data. What are the public benefits that come with this public interest in data sharing? In a deeply unequal world, are these benefits globally felt, or are such benefits limited to certain socio-economic groups? What impact does open science have on research participants themselves and the communities they come from? How does open science affect researchers and their practices, particularly those coming from less well-resourced networks and institutions?
On the 25th anniversary of the Bermuda Principles on DNA Sequence and Data Sharing (1996), this plenary will consider these and other questions from a diversity of perspectives.
Revisiting Darwin’s Descent (1871–2021)
Time: Thursday, July 15, 16:05–17:30 EDT
Organizer and Chair: Thierry Hoquet
Panelists: Ross Brooks, Peter Godfrey Smith, Kimberly Hamlin, Christa Kuljian, Zuleyma Tang Martinez
A century and a half ago (1871), Darwin published The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. While the Origin of Species in 1859 was rather reluctant to get embroiled in the conundrum of human nature, the Descent had an immediate, passion-stirring, and complex impact on the history of human societies. The book was at once a major contribution to evolutionary science with the theory of sexual selection, a controversial book on human origins, and an account of racial diversity and sex differences. In this plenary panel, we will revisit the Descent’s legacy as a node to investigate the much debated status of race, sex, and sexuality; the contorted problem of ‘human nature’; the meaning of behavior, intelligence, and morality; and the differences between human and non-human animals.
Kimberly Hamlin will take us from Eve to Women’s Rights in Gilded Age America while Ross Brooks will offer us a glimpse into ‘Darwin’s closet’ and show us the rather unexpected queer sides of Darwin’s Descent. Christa Kuljian will explore Darwin’s ‘hunch,’ that all humans share common origins in Africa. Zuleyma Tang Martinez will explain how Darwin’s central concept of sexual selection was progressively elaborated into the ‘Darwin-Bateman-Trivers Paradigm’: a controversial theoretical and empirical entity which slowly took shape but was rapidly deconstructed. Finally, walking in Darwin’s footsteps, Peter Godfrey Smith will delve into the evolutionary origins not only of our bodies but of our minds.
Viral Vulnerability: From Permissivity to Pessimism
Time: Tuesday, July 20, 9:30–10:55 EDT
Organizer and Chair: Eben Kirksey
Panelists: Sria Chatterjee, Alexander Gorbalenya, Steve Hinchliffe, and Anthony Ryan Hatch
Vulnerability to SARS-CoV-2 is best understood with perspectives from multiple sites and scales. In the barely perceptible realm of cells, vulnerability involves molecular dynamics. If there is a good fit between the coronavirus ‘spike’ protein and a cell receptor called ACE2, then a fusion takes place, letting the virus inside the cell. Once the virus is inside the cell, viral proteins unfold and become lively. This panel will sidestep foundational distinctions between ‘life’ and ‘non-life’ to offer perspectives on the distributed viral processes that unfold in ‘permissive’ host cells. The panel will bring a world-renowned virologist into conversation with a geographer, art historian, and critical race theorist. We will consider how particular configurations —of molecules, multispecies relations, as well as political and economic assemblages— produce opportunities for viral contagion. Vulnerability to infection depends on the state of a body before a virus arrives. Intergenerational processes, like racism and colonialism, transform human biology. Pre-pandemic inequalities in medicine and the food system —within the United States and on the global stage— created critical injuries that made structurally marginalized peoples especially vulnerable during the coronavirus pandemic.