The Local Organizing Committee is happy to welcome you in Oslo for the 2019 ISHPSSB biennial meeting.
The meeting was a joint effort of The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology (NTM) and the University of Oslo Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), the Institute of Health and Society (HELSAM), the TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, and the Museum of Cultural History - Department of Ethnography, Numismatics, Classical Archaeology and University History (MUV). It took place at the main university campus, Blindern, which is located on the western outskirts of the city centre.
The International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology brings together scholars from diverse disciplines, including the life sciences as well as history, philosophy, and social studies of science. The biennial ISHPSSB summer meetings are known for innovative, transdisciplinary sessions, and for fostering informal, co-operative exchanges and on-going collaborations.
With the 2019 meeting we hoped to continue and enrich our traditions. We built on the strengths of the local communities of scholars in the social studies of science, biomedical sciences, science communication and museum studies, and we explored new and persistent topics through engaging and innovative formats. We encouraged all organizers of sessions and participants to attend especially to considerations of diversity in terms of discipline, geography, ethnicity, gender and career stage. We were and remain committed to working for high accessibility and reducing our environmental impact. We tried our best to stay true to ISHPSSB’s spirit and to create a collegial and informal atmosphere of lively dialogue.
Welcome to Oslo!
Ageliki Lefkaditou, Chair of the Oslo2019 Local Organizing Committee (NTM)
Susanne Bauer (TIK, UiO)
Sophia Efstathiou (Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, NTNU)
Hallvard Fossheim (Department of Philosophy, UiB)
Christoph Gradmann (HELSAM, UiO)
Thomas F. Hansen (CEES, UiO)
Jon Røyne Kyllingstad (MUV, UiO)
Conference dates
The Oslo 2019 ISHPSSB meeting started on Sunday 7 July with social events such as welcome speeches, reception with soft drinks and finger food, museum tours and film viewings at the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology. The last day of the meeting was Friday 12 July with a half day of presentations, and special tours in Oslo after the end of the program.
Conference website and Call for Papers
The conference website is/was available at ishpssb2019.tekniskmuseum.no where all the relevant dates are found (Early Bird registration, Call for Papers deadlines, and so forth), with guidance on the possible formats for submissions as well as the rules (most crucially, One submission is allowed per participant as either a speaker, co-author, commentator, roundtable participant, mixed media or poster author, besides chairing one session).
You could keep in touch via the ISHPSSB Facebook page, or by re-reading the Fall2017 Newsletter for some Oslo couleur locale.
Keynote lectures
Dr. Fern Wickson is Research Professor of Environmental Governance, and Research Leader at the GenØk Centre for Biosafety in Tromsø (Norway). Her work focuses on the science/policy interface: The integration of science, indigenous knowledge, stakeholder views, and environmental philosophy in the pursuit of sustainable food systems.
As Senior Scientist at GenØk, Fern coordinates the transdisciplinary collaborative, Responsible and Sustainable Biotechnoscience (RootS), and is project leader for several international research projects on the environmental governance of new technologies (e.g., biotechnology and nanotechnology). She has served as an expert delegate to the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a working group on the diverse conceptualization of values in nature, is a member of the Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board, and is past President of the international Society for the Study of New and Emerging Technologies (S.Net). Committed to ecological ethics and a politics of socio-ecological care, she works to advance sustainability in food systems and responsibility in research and innovation arenas.
An Australian citizen with an interdisciplinary PhD in biology and political science who has lived in Norway for over a decade, Fern enjoys hiking in her spare time as well as snowboarding, kayaking and growing her own food. She is also a yoga and meditation teacher, and runs her own studio in Tromsø called The Peaceful Wild.
Gísli Pálsson is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iceland. He has written extensively on a variety of issues, including human-environmental relations, slavery, biomedicine, and genomics. He has done fieldwork in Iceland, the Republic of Cape Verde, the Canadian Arctic, and the Virgin Islands. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of many books, including Anthropology and the New Genetics (2007); Biosocial Becomings: Integrating Social and Biological Anthropology, co-edited with Tim Ingold (2013), Nature, Culture, and Society: Anthropological Perspectives on Life (2016), Can Science Solve the Nature/Nurture Debate?, with Margaret Lock (2016), and The Man Who Stole Himself (2016).
Pálsson has a keen interest in photography and human/other-than-human relations. Recently he has embarked on a new project that combines scholarship and the arts, science and history: the fate of the Great Auk (Penguinus impennis), which became extinct by the mid-nineteenth century.