Londa Schiebinger

The John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science
History Department, Building 200
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2024

The Barbara D. Finberg Director,
Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research

Tel (650) 723-1994 (option 1)
Fax (650) 725-0374
schieb@stanford.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Publicity Photos

Background and Current Research

Londa Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science at Stanford University and Director or Stanford's Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Over the past twenty years, Schiebinger's work has been devoted to teasing apart three analytically distinct but interlocking pieces of the gender and science puzzle: the history of women's participation in science; the structure of scientific institutions; and the gendering of human knowledge. Her current work explores "gendered innovations." Gendered innovations refers to transformations in the personnel, cultures, and content of science and engineering brought about through gender analysis. Gender analysis, when applied rigorously and creatively, has the potential to enhance science and engineering by sparking new perspectives, new questions, and new missions. Her new volume is Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering (Stanford University Press, 2008).

Schiebinger's work in the eighteenth century, supported this year by a grant from the National Science Foundation, investigates colonial science in the Atlantic World. In particular she explores medical experimentation with slave populations in the Caribbean. Her project reconceptualizes research in four areas: first and foremost knowledge of African contributions to early modern science; the historiography of race in science; the history of human experimentation; and the role of science in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.

Londa Schiebinger has been the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize and John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. She has also served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin, the Jantine Tammes Chair in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Groningen, a guest professor at the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, and the Maria Goeppert-Meyer Distinguished Visitor, Oldenburg University. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Endowment for the Humanities, Rockefeller Foundation, Fulbright-Hays Commission, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.

Most recently Londa Schiebinger was awarded the 2005 Prize in Atlantic History from the American Historical Association and the 2005 Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society both for her Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World. She also won the 2005 J. Worth Estes Prize from the American Association for the History of Medicine for her article "Feminist History of Colonial Science," Hypatia 19 (2004): 233-254. This prize goes to the author of an article of outstanding scholarly merit in the history of pharmacology. Her work has been translated into more than ten languages.

Londa Schiebinger's research has been featured in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitschrift, La Vanguardia, at the London Museum of Natural History, on NPR, and elsewhere. She speaks and consults nationally and internationally on issues surrounding women and gender in science, medicine, and engineering.

Schiebinger is currently accepting graduate students in Gender in Science, the history of the Atlantic World, Colonial Science and Medicine, Race, and Eighteenth-Century European Science and Medicine.

Education

Ph.D. Harvard University, Department of History, 1984
M.A. Harvard University, Department of History, 1977
B.A. University of Nebraska, Department of English, 1974

Selected Publications

	2008	Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance (Stanford University Press). Edited by Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger. Review in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung
	2008	Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering (Stanford University Press). Edited by Londa Schiebinger.
	2008	Dual-Career Academic Couples: What Universities Need to Know with Andrea Davies Henderson and Shannon K. Gilmartin (Stanford: Clayman Institute for Gender Research, 2008).
	2008	Climbing the Technical Ladder: Obstacles and Solutions for Mid-Level Women in Technology with Caroline Simard, Andrea Davies Henderson, Shannon K. Gilmartin, and Telle Whitney (Palo Alto and Stanford: Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology in collaboration with the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, 2008).
	2004	Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Harvard University Press). Foreign Translation: Japanese (Kosakusha Publishing Co., in progress). Winner of the Prize in Atlantic History, American Historical Association, 2005, and the Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize, French Colonial Historical Society, 2005.
	2004	Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics, edited by Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (University of Pennsylvania Press).
	2004	Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press)--new edition.
	2001	Feminism in Twentieth-Century Science, Technology, and Medicine, edited by Angela Creager, Elizabeth Lunbeck, and Londa Schiebinger (University of Chicago Press).
	2001	Oxford Companion to the Body, edited by Colin Blakemore and Sheila Jennett; Section editors Alan Cuthbert, the late Roy Porter, Tom Sears, Londa Schiebinger, and Tilli Tansey (Oxford University Press).
	2000	Feminism and the Body, edited by Londa Schiebinger; a collection of essays by Janet Browne, Sander Gilman, Lynn Hunt, Thomas Laqueur, Marina Warner, and others (Oxford University Press).
	1999	Has Feminism Changed Science? Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Foreign Translations: Japanese (Kosakusha Publishing Co., 2002); German (München: Beck Verlag, 2000); Portuguese (Editora da Universidade do Sagrado Coração, 2001); Korean (Dulnyouk Publishing Co., 2002).
	1993	Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Boston: Beacon Press). Foreign Translations: Japanese (Tokyo: Kosakusha Publishing Co., 1996); German (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag, 1995); and Hungarian (in preparation). Winner of the Ludwik Fleck Book Prize, Society for Social Studies of Science, 1995.
	1989	The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Foreign Translations: Japanese (Tokyo: Kosakusha Publishing Co., 1992); German (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag, 1993); Chinese (Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing); Portuguese (Lisbon: Pandora Ediçioes, 2001); and Greek (Athens: Katoptro, 2003).

Editor, Forum, Isis, Journal of the History of Science Society, 96 (2005):52-87 on "Colonial Science" with articles on Britain by Mark Harrison, Iberia by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, the Jesuits by Steven J. Harris, and France by Michael A. Osborne.

Editor, article cluster for Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28 (2003):859-922 on "Feminism Inside the Sciences" with articles on physics (by Amy Bug), archaeology (by Margaret W. Conkey), and evolutionary biology (by Patricia Adair Gowaty).

Editor, special section, Science in Context, 15 (2002):473-576 on "European Women in Science" with articles on France by Claudine Hermann and Françoise Cyrot-Lackmann, on Germany by Ilse Costas, and the Netherlands by Mineke Bosch.

Prizes and Awards

Prize in Atlantic History, American Historical Association, 2005,

Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (2004).

Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize, French Colonial Historical Society, 2005,

Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (2004).

J. Worth Estes Prize for the History of Pharmacology, American Association for the History of

Medicine, 2005, for "Feminist History of Colonial Science," Hypatia (2004).

Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize, Berlin, 1999-2000 (first woman historian to win this

senior prize).

Faculty Scholar's Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts and Humanities,

Pennsylvania State University, 2000.

National Science Foundation, Grant for Graduate Training and Research, 2001-2004.

National Science Foundation Scholars Award, 2002-2004.

Senior Research Fellow, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin, 1999-2000.

National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine Fellowship, Spring 1998.

Claire Booth Luce Foundation, Scholarships Grant, for Women in the Sciences and

Engineering Institute, PSU, 1996-98.

National Science Foundation Scholars Award, 1991-1993, 1996.

Alumni Outstanding Achievement Award, University of Nebraska, 1996.

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, 1995.

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Officer's Grant, for the WISE Institute, PSU, 1995.

Class of 1933 Distinction in the Humanities Award, PSU, 1994.

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow, 1991-92.

Award for Enhancement of Undergraduate Instruction, PSU, 1991.

American Council of Learned Societies, Summer 1989.

Rockefeller Foundation Humanist-in-Residence, Rutgers U., 1988-89.

National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship, 1986-87.

Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, 1985-1986.

Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Grant, Summer 1985.

Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson Foundation,

1983-84.

Marion and Jasper Whiting Fellowship, Paris, Summer 1982.
Fulbright-Hayes Graduate Scholar in Germany, 1980-81.

History of Women in Science Prize, History of Science Society, 1994, for "Why Mammals are

Called Mammals," American Historical Review (1993).

Roy C. Buck Essay Prize, PSU, 1990, for "The Anatomy of Difference: Race and Gender in

Eighteenth-Century Science," 18th-Century Studies.

Films

Research co-director for television documentary film: "Too Long a Sacrifice," on life and politics in rural Northern Ireland, for Central Television and the British Film Institute, aired on Britain's Channel 4, November 1984; also at the London Film Institute and on PBS (channel 13, New York) March 1986.

Current courses

Gender in Science, Medicine, and Engineering (History 144/344)
Innovations surrounding women and gender have rocked science and technology in the past three decades. This course examines at the history of men and women's participation in science from the eighteenth-century to the present. We look in particular at how gender analysis has sparked creativity in human knowledge. Examples of success come from medicine, biology, engineering, and archaeology. Questions remain concerning whether gender analysis has anything to offer physics, mathematics, computer science, or chemistry-issues we will also address. The question is how can an understanding of how gender operates in science, medicine, and engineering to open new questions and fields for future research. This course also examines gender in academic culture, exploring the many unexamined biases that impede women moving to the top in their fields. We analyze the many efforts underway nationally and internationally to transform science, medicine, and engineering into fields where women, too, can flourish.

Science, Medicine, and Empire
England, France, Spain, and Holland all secured vast colonial holdings by way of new markets in coffee, tea, sugar cane, pepper, nutmeg, cotton, ipecacuanha, and other profitable plants. Colonial sciences and medicines were important militarily and strategically for positioning emerging nation states in global struggles for land and resources. This seminar will focus on the global exchange of knowledge, technologies, plants, peoples, disease, and medicines. Key questions include: Whose knowledge is embedded in the use of these plants - Amerindians, African slaves in the Americas, European voyagers? How did disease travel and influence European colonization of tropical lands? What is the political economy of nature? How did racism arise and what is its relationship to colonialism? We will consider primarily French, British, and Dutch interests in the eighteenth-century Atlantic World, but take examples from India, North and South America, and elsewhere as needed. We read key primary and secondary texts on voyaging, colonialism, science, slavery, and environmental exchange.

The Body in Science, Medicine and Culture
The human body as a natural and cultural object, historicized. This course investigates the cultural history of the body from the eighteenth century to the present from many points of view. First we see how medicine and science have sex and raced bodies. Next we look at "body politics," focusing on elaborate rituals surrounding monarchs' bodies in absolute states and the shift to notions that "biology is destiny" in modern democratic societies. The course also delves into the embodiment of cultural ideals, such as 'Liberty' and 'Justice,' and asks how bodies function symbolically in culture. Finally, we study aspects of bodily practices associated with masculinities and femininities across several cultures.

Self-Fashioning: Dressing for Science and Medicine
The politics of dress and self presentation has recently emerged as a topic of growing historical interest. While numerous scholars have discussed clothing in relation to national politics and especially emerging bourgeois culture, few have looked at the questions of self-identity tied up in the development of scientific apparel. We will look at the development of protective clothing--the lab coat, surgeon's aprons, goggles, etc., and also the unwritten rules of scientific dress. Why was it de rigeur in the 1960s for left-leaning biologists to dress down? Why would a young female astronomer at NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore refer to what she feels is required dress (blue jeans and a flannel shirt) as her "chador"? What are the rules of dress in science and medicine, and how do they related to the place of science and scientists (medicine and physicians) in society?

EDITORIAL BOARDS MEMBERSHIPS

• Isis, Journal of the History of Science Society (Advisory Board 2004-2009).

• Science (Board of Advisors, Book Reviews 2001-).

• Science Studies, Finnish Society for Science and Technology Studies (2005-).

• Eighteenth-Century Studies (Board of Editors 1995-7; Advisory Board 1993-1995).

• Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society (1994-).

• Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering (1994-).

• Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology (1994-).

• Gender and History (2000-).

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