Science and technology move at a rate that creates social and political problems faster than we know how to handle them — but tailoring science and technology to certain limits is not possible. Research moves without reference to limits; if we don’t go ahead, someone else will. There is a need for nontechnical people to develop a better way to handle the resulting problems.
Robert Holtz, 1996
- Context of the Founding of the Center
- Evolution and Development of the Holtz Center Over the Years
- "Science and the Public" Events Over the Years
- Select Conferences and Workshops Co-hosted and/or Co-funded Over the Years
The Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies began in earnest when Robert and Jean Holtz set up a $1 million fund with the University of Wisconsin Foundation in July 1995 “for the purposes of integrating the sciences and the humanities.” Robert Holtz BS’40, MS’43 (Electrical Engineering) had long reckoned with complex interactions between scientific and technological progress and social change. In setting up the fund, he realized the need for greater understanding by both technically and non-technically oriented individuals of these realities. The agreement made with the University of Wisconsin Foundation explicitly stated Robert and Jean’s intention to “endow a permanent academic center that will have as its objective the establishing of curricula, courses and programs to bring the influence of the humanities into the study of science and science into the study of the humanities.”
Further efforts to institutionally strengthen STS research and education on campus advanced with the hiring of three faculty members, namely Joan Fujimura (Sociology), Gregg Mitman (Medical History and Bioethics) and Clark Miller (Public Affairs). They were hired through a science studies cluster hire in 2001 that was part of Round 3 of the campus-wide Cluster Hiring Initiative that began in 1999. This initiative consisted of a total of 49 cluster hires stemmed from the university’s strategic planning processes in the mid-1990s to promote interdisciplinary research on campus. This science studies cluster hire was motivated in part as a response to growing public concern at the turn of the millennium with social and ethical issues surrounding “new genetic technologies.” As a result, the social study of five areas of emerging technologies: stem cell biology, human genetic variation, systems biology, political ecology, and nanotechnology became the intellectual focus of these three hires.
These hires and additional enhancement grants from the College of Letters and Sciences provided subsequent momentum towards the formal establishment of the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies in September 2004. A steering committee led by Dean Philip Certain played a crucial role in the founding of the Center. The Departments of Agricultural Journalism (today Life Sciences Communication), Anthropology, Geology, History of Science, School of Human Ecology, Industrial Engineering, Philosophy, Rural Sociology (today, Community and Environmental Sociology), Sociology as well as the Program in Women’s Studies (today, the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies), and the Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication and Library and Information Studies all contributed significantly as well. Initial substantive areas of expertise that were identified include Biomedical Sciences, Information Technologies, Social Sciences (as objects of study), Technology Studies, Environmental Studies, Agriculture and Society. This focus stemmed from growing concern at the time with the human and societal implications of both rapid environmental change as well as advancements in information and communications technologies in addition to social study of the life sciences that was the specific focus of the cluster hire.
In addition to Joan Fujimura, Gregg Mitman and Clark Miller, the initial affiliates of the Center who had already been faculty members at UW-Madison were as follows, Rima Apple (Consumer Science), Sharon Dunwoody (Journalism and Mass Communication), Warwick Anderson* (Medical History and Bioethics), Dan Hausman* (Philosophy), Lawrence Shapiro (Philosophy), Elliot Sober (Philosophy), Frederick Buttel* (Rural Sociology), Charles Camic (Sociology); Thomas Broman (History of Science), Daniel Kleinman* (Rural Sociology), Eric Schatzberg* (History of Science); Samer Alatout (Rural Sociology), Greg Downey (Journalism and Mass Communication), Kristen Eschenfelder (Library and Information Studies), Jeremy Freese (Sociology), Richard Keller (Medical History and Bioethics), Pilar Ossorio (Law School), John Rudolph (Curriculum and Instruction), Assistant Dean Sarah Pfatteicher* (College of Engineering), Douglas Maynard* (Sociology), Linda Hogle* (Medical History and Bioethics).
* member of first Steering Committee of the Holtz Center
Major speakers invited through Lecture Series
In the first few years of the Holtz Center, many prominent STS scholars were invited to give talks at UW-Madison as part of a regular speaker series. These include Sandra Harding, Sheila Jasanoff, Ashis Nandy, Peter Galison, Karen Barad, Bruno Latour, Steven Shapin, Geoffrey Bowker, Michel Callon, Karin Knorr-Cetina, Alondra Nelson and Stephen Hilgartner.
List of directors
Beginning of Center-Spring 2006: Joan Fujimura
Fall 2006-Spring 2007: Linda Hogle
Fall 2007-Spring 2012: Daniel Kleinman
Fall 2012-Spring 2015: Eric Schatzberg
Fall 2015-Spring 2019: Samer Alatout
Fall 2019-Spring 2023: Noah Feinstein
Fall 2023-present: Jenell Johnson
With initial supplementary funding from Jean Holtz in 2008, this annual event was inaugurated with the intention of engaging the general Madison public on a scientific topic of widespread interest. A number of associated events were recorded and broadcast on Wisconsin Public Television with the intention of reaching broad audiences.
2008-2009: “Climate Change is Here, What Can We Do?”
2009-2010: “The Future of Energy: A Thematic and Integrated Program
2010-2011: “From Texting to Twitter”
2011-2012: “The Future of Nuclear Power in the Wake of Fukushima”
2012-2013: “Computers, Privacy and the Environment”
2013-2014: “The Cultural Politics of Food”
2014-2015: “Digital Society and its Discontents”
2015-2016: “Water and Justice, Flint, California and Palestine”
2016-2017: “Gene Editing: The Future of Disease, Bodies and Life”
2017-2018: “Big Data, Surveillance and Race: the Criminal Justice System”
2018-2019: “Disaster: Imagining the Future in Uncertain Times”
2002
“Environment, Health and Place in Global Perspective” (co-sponsored)
2004
“Race, Genetics and Disease: Questions of Evidence, Questions of Consequence” (co-sponsored) (A special issue of Social Studies of Science published as result of conference)
2006
“Sociological, Ethical and Policy Studies of International Stem Cell Projects.”
“Science Studies and Political Ecology: Theoretical Engagements with Nature-Society Relations” (An edited volume published as result of conference)
2012
“Taking Animals Apart” (graduate student workshop)
2010
“What is the Human?” (co-sponsored)
“International Conference on Emerging Issues in Regenerative Medicine” (hosted)
“The Culture of Print in Science, Engineering, and Medicine” (co-sponsored)
“Visualizing Science” (co-sponsored)
2014
“When Nature and Numbers (Don’t) Meet”
2016
“Disclosing/Enclosing Knowledge in the Life Sciences Summer School (22 graduate student attendees)
2018
“MidweSTS Graduate Student Conference”