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londa schiebinger

Londa Schiebinger

John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science; The Barbara D. Finberg Director, Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research

E-mail: schiebinger@stanford.edu

Full Contact Information

At Stanford Since 2004

Ph.D. Harvard University

Bio Sketch

Londa Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science in the History Department at Stanford University, and joined Stanford's Clayman Institute for Gender Research in April of 2004 as the Barbara D. Finberg Director. 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.  Her new volume, Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering (Stanford University Press, 2008) analyzes all aspects of gendered innovations in these fields with special attention to innovations in human knowledge and technical systems.  Gender analysis, when applied rigorously and creatively, has the potential to enhance science and engineering by sparking new perspectives, new questions, and new missions.

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 ten languages.

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

Selected Publications

Agnotology book coverForthcoming 2008:  Agnotology:  The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, edited by Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger (Stanford: Stanford University Press).

Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering book coverForthcoming 2008:  Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering, edited by Londa Schiebinger (Stanford: Stanford University Press).

book cover2005 Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics, edited by Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (University of Pennsylvania Press); paperback 2007.

book cover2004: 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.

book cover2004: Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press)--new edition.

book cover2001: Feminism in Twentieth-Century Science, Technology, and Medicine, edited by Angela Creager, Elizabeth Lunbeck, and Londa Schiebinger (University of Chicago Press).

book cover2001: 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).

book cover2000: 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).

book cover1999: 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).

book cover1993: 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.

book cover1989: 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 Bo.

Courses Taught

  • The History of Women and Gender in Science, Medicine, and Technology
  • Eighteenth-Century Colonial Science
  • The Body in Science, Medicine and Culture
  • Self-Fashioning: Dressing for Science and Medicine
  • Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World

Films

  • Historical consultant for "Out of the Chrysalis: A Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian" by Flare Films. West-coast US premiere at Stanford University expected 2007.
  • 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.

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 Asociation 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.