Key Researchers

Research Leads

Cynthia Selin is a co-lead of CNS’s RTTA III.  She graduated in 2000 with an M. A. in Science, Technology and Society from Roskilde University (Denmark) where her research focused on technology assessment, and, more specifically, scenario planning. These interested were pursued at Copenhagen Business Schools’ Institute for Management, Politics and Philosophy in her doctoral project, completed 2006. The Ph.D. dissertation, entitled Volatile Visions: Transactions in Anticipatory Knowledge explores three interwoven research areas- foresight methodologies, the sociology of expectations and the emergence of nanotechnology- in order to understand the development of new technologies and to explore the tools and methods used to grasping their emergence.

Kelly Campbell Rawlings holds a Ph.D. in Public Administration from ASU. Her research focuses on examining the intersections between governance, citizens, and civil society and identifying how these interactions impact the individuals and institutions involved.  She recently expanded this focus to study the emerging ideas and institutions of democracy and the ways in which public participation is understood and interconnected throughout the various spheres of life and sectors of society. She is currently in the process of developing a genealogy of public participation in order to identify the ways in which the images, assumptions, and expectations surrounding citizen inclusion have evolved throughout the formal history of the field of public administration.

Kathryn de Ridder-Vignone has a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Cornell University.  Her dissertation research examines the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network and its role in democratizing science and technology through informal civic education and learning. Her other areas of interest include: social and ethical issues of emerging technologies, public understanding of and engagement with emerging technologies, the role of education in the governance of emerging technologies, and technologies as agents of social and political change.

Stephanie Long is the Manager of Public Programs and Science Live for the Science Museum of Minnesota. Her responsibilities as Manager include strategic planning and the budgeting.  Along with serving as Manager, she also works as an actor, playwright, and producer for new museum productions, along with the remounting of past productions from a large repertoire of shows.  She has worked in the museum for nine years, and has presented and performed at ASTC and AAM.  She is also involved with the Nanoscale Informal Science Education (NISE) network, and her experience working on the programs and forums teams has provided her with international museum connections.  

Students

Carlo Altamirano Allende is a Fulbright fellow doctoral student in the Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology program at ASU and research assistant at CSPO-CNS. His main research interests lie in the convergence between science and democracy, focusing mainly on public participation processes and citizen engagement for anticipatory governance in urban environments. He holds a B.S. and M.S. in Physics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) where he researched on the statistical and thermodynamical basis for Complex Systems theory.

Jathan Sadowski is a graduate student in the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes as well as the Center for Nanotechnology in Society. His research is informed by a cross section of philosophy of technology, applied ethics, social theory, and STS.

Partners

Thad Miller is an Assistant Professor of Urban Civic Ecology at Portland State University’s Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning. He is also a Faculty Fellow with the Institute for Sustainable Solutions and an Associated Faculty of the Ecosystem Services in Urbanizing Regions IGERT program.  His research explores how scientific and technological (S&T) solutions to sustainability are framed, developed, deployed, and contested, and how they are imagined to meet visions of social and natural well-being. He is interested in how sustainability is interpreted and enrolled in S&T and how it is materialized and settled in S&T policy and design choices. 

David Tomblin is the director of the STS Scholars Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. He also teaches in the Science, Technology and Society Department at Virginia Tech’s NCR campus. He also has a forthcoming book, Power, Knowledge, and Tribal Autonomy: Ecological Restoration and the White Mountain Apache Tribe (2014). He currently works with Experts and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (ECAST) on a number of citizen engagement projects.

Gretchen Gano is a doctoral student at Arizona State University in the Human & Social Dimensions of Science and Technology program. Her research examines formal technology assessment and explores experimental public engagement in urban and informal science education settings. Gano is a Lecturer for the Science, Technology and Society Initiative, a campus-wide effort based at the Center for and Public Policy and Administration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is active in the Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (ECAST) Network. ECAST is a national network of nonpartisan policy research institutions, universities, and informal science education centers working together to support better-informed governmental and societal decisions on complex issues involving science and technology. As a part of ECAST's latest project, Gano was the project manager for research and citizen recruitment efforts to host the Massachusetts site of a global citizen consultation organized by the Danish Board of Technology called World Wide Views on Biodiversity. World Wide Views is a participatory technology assessment focused on incorporating citizen views on international governance at the United Nations Conference of Parties on Biological Diversity (Cop 11).

Roopali Phadke is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Environmental policy and politics at Macalester College.  Her research and teaching is at the nexus of environmental studies, international development and science and technology studies. Her interests lie in the democratization of science and technology decision-making and the hybridization of technical expertise and local knowledge. Her current research focuses on private and public development of water and energy resources.

Kevin Jones has a background in the social study of science and society, environmental sociology and policy studies.  At the City-Region Studies Center of the University of Alberta, he is researching the relationships between technological innovation, urban development and community participation.  He is currently cross-appointed with the Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology where he is studying institutional adaptation to risk scenarios including food safety to climate change.