Director

Sheila Jasanoff Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies Kennedy School of Government Harvard University Littauer-354 Tel: 617-495-7902 Fax: 617-496-5960 email: sheila_jasanoff@harvard.edu web: faculty homepage

SHEILA JASANOFF is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She is also affiliated with the Department of the History of Science, member of the Board of Tutors in Environmental Science and Public Policy, and visiting professor at Harvard Law School. Before joining Harvard, she was Professor of Science Policy and Law and founding chair of the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University.

Professor Jasanoff's longstanding research interests center on the interactions of law, science, and politics in democratic societies. She is particularly concerned with the construction of public reason in various cultural contexts, and with the role of science and technology in globalization. Specific areas of work include science and the courts; environmental regulation and risk management; comparative public policy; social studies of science and technology; and science and technology policy. She has published more than 85 articles and book chapters on these topics and has authored or edited numerous books, including Controlling Chemicals: The Politics of Regulation in Europe and the United States (1985; with R. Brickman and T. Ilgen), Risk Management and Political Culture (1985), The Fifth Branch: Science Advisers as Policymakers (1990), Learning from Disaster: Risk Management After Bhopal (edited; 1994). Jasanoff is a co-editor of the Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (1995). Her book Science at the Bar: Law, Science and Technology in America (1995) received the Don K. Price award of the American Political Science Association, Section on Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics, for the best book on science and politics (1998).

Her most recent publications include two edited volumes: States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and Social Order (2004) and (with Marybeth Martello) Earthly Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance (2004). Her latest book, a comparative study of the politics of biotechnology in Britain, Germany and the United States, entitled Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States, was published by Princeton University Press in 2005.

For a more complete biography of Professor Jasanoff, as well as a complete list of her publications and courses taught, see her personal webpage.

Recent news

• On December 1, 2006, Professor Jasanoff received an honorary degree from the University of Twente, Netherlands. It was the first time in the university's 45-year history that they so honored a woman. Press releases from the University of Twente have been archived here: August 31 (Dutch), September 7 (English), November 9 (Dutch), and December 7 (Dutch).
  
  
• On June 15, 2006, Professor Jasanoff gave the first annual BIOS Lecture at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The lecture, Experiments Without Borders: Biology in the Labs of Life," is available online at here. Press release and photos available here.
  
  
• On March 25, 2006, Professor Jasanoff gave the Cecil and Ida Green Lecture at the Vancouver Institute at the University of British Columbia on "Governing Life: The Comparative Politics of Biotechnology." Abstract available here.
  
  
• A lecture Professor Jasanoff gave to the Havens Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on April 22, 2005, "The Imagined Earth: Reflections on the Human Place in Nature," is available online as an audio file here (direct link to MP3).
  
  
• Prof. Jasanoff was interviewed for the Spanish television program Redes, and the clip is visible online here (Spanish).