Election of Officers 2013

Ana Barahona, Past-President and Chair, Nominations Committee

The Election of Officers will be conducted electronically for the third
time, but using a different method than in 2009 and 2011. Information on
voting procedures follows the biographies of the nominees.

The Nominations Committee is pleased to present the slate for the 2013
ISHPSSB election, along with biographies and photos of the nominees. Many
thanks to all who suggested names and to the members of the Nominations
Committee for their diligent work. They are Marion Blute, Sabine
Brauckmann, Richard Burian, Judy Johns Schloegel, Edna Suárez and Ana
Barahona (Chair). We all owe many thanks to our current Officers and
Council members.

In proposing nominees, the Nominations Committee strove to achieve balance
with regard to field, gender, nationality, and experience. Following the
precedent of years past, we decided to nominate two Program Co-Chairs, Mark
Borrello and Rob Wilson. In accordance with the Society’s by-laws, we
solicited nominations from the membership at large. Those nominated by two
or more members, or by the Nominations Committee, and who have expressed
their willingness to serve now comprise the slate. Our sincere thanks to
all who have agreed to be nominated.

NOMINEE BIOGRAPHIES

For President-elect:

Keith R. Benson (USA)

As an historian of biology, I have specialized in the history of American
biology and marine biology. I have also been active in a variety of
organizational and administrative functions in the history and philosophy
of science. I started the Columbia History of Science Group in 1983, a
regional organization. I served as Executive Secretary of the History of
Science Society (1993-98) and as Editor-in-chief of History and Philosophy
of the Life Sciences (2006-12). For ISHPSSB, I was the Chair of the Local
Arrangements for the Seattle (1997) and then as Treasurer in 1999 (through
2007). As Treasurer, my two accomplishments were to place the Society on
solid financial grounds, enabling it to expand the number of travel grants
and to centralize the meeting planning, thus lowering costs while
maximizing the income for the Society. The most important activity of
ISHPSSB is the biennial meeting. As President, I will address two aspects
of the meeting, one bureaucratic and one intellectual. First, ISHPSSB needs
to control all aspects of the meeting, from the initial planning to the
final implementation. With this direct involvement, the Society will be
able to control costs and revenue. The meeting represents ISHPSSB’s major
source of revenue and expense, so the Society’s financial stability is
dependent on these controls. Second, ISHPSSB began with a commitment to
interdisciplinary investigations of biology, bringing together historians,
philosophers, sociologists, and biologists. These connections need to be
strengthened programmatically, including links with various international
communities featuring strengths in various disciplines. Focusing on these
aspects of ISHPSSB’s biennial meeting will strengthen the Society’s future.



Michel Morange (France)

Trained in biochemistry and molecular biology, I developed a very early
interest in the history of the biological sciences. I was convinced that
history was necessary to fully apprehend the work done in biology. My first
studies were on the history of molecular biology. I have since expanded my
interests, but have never renounced studying the different facets of what I
consider to be a major transformation of biology. When I progressively
devoted more time and effort to what was initially a hobby, one of the
first international meetings that I attended was the ISH meeting of 1995 in
Leuven. For the outsider that I was at the time, this was a huge support,
and there is no doubt that this meeting was responsible for the increasing
place that the history of biology has had in my career ever since. What I
would like to do if I was elected is to bring back to the Society what it
gave me. I would like to help young people to feel immediately at home in
these disciplines. I would like to encourage scholars from different parts
of the world who share the same interest in the study of biology to join
the Society. As a young scientist, I realized how difficult it was to
convince biologists that it was important for them to have a better idea of
the history of their own discipline. I later had to convince historians
that although I was a biologist I could do serious historical work. I
discovered later that other barriers unfortunately also exist between the
various disciplines in the study of biology. I would like to help break
down these barriers, and I think that the ISH is the right place to do that.


For Council (select up to three):

Rachel A. Ankeny (Australia)

Rachel A. Ankeny is Associate Professor and Associate Dean (Research) at
the University of Adelaide. She is an interdisciplinary teacher and scholar
whose work in the history/philosophy of science focuses on the recent
biomedical sciences, particularly genetics/genomics and clinical medicine.
Her current research interests include conceptual issues relating to model
organisms and the use of cases in the biomedical sciences. Rachel has a BA
in Liberal Arts (Philosophy/Maths, St John's College, Santa Fe), and MA
degrees in Philosophy and in Bioethics, and a PhD in the History and
Philosophy of Science (all from the University of Pittsburgh). She is a
co-founder and organisation committee member of the international Society
for Philosophy of Science in Practice, and of the International Philosophy
of Medicine Roundtable. Rachel currently serves as chair of the National
Committee for History and Philosophy of Science of the Australian Academy
of Sciences and is an Associate Editor for *Studies in History and
Philosophy of Science.* Motivation: I have been active in the ISHSSPB
community since 1997, and served on the Operations Committee, 2005–7, as
well as being Co-chair of the Local Arrangements committee for the biennial
meeting held in Brisbane, Australia in July 2009. My motivation to serve on
the ISHSSPB Council relates to my desire to contribute to a society that I
highly value due to its strong sense of community and collegiality, as well
as its emphasis on interdisciplinarity. Although I think ISH is extremely
inclusive, I want to make more active efforts to engage sociologists and
other science studies scholars who are not currently as active in the
organization as are historians and philosophers, as well as continuing to
promote ISH on the international scene, especially in Australia.





Matt Haber (USA)

I first became active in ISHPSSB when I attended the Quinnipiac meeting
(2001) as a graduate student.  In 2004, along with several other
then-graduate students, I helped to organize and host the first student-led
Off Year Workshop (FDISH San Francisco).  I have since maintained an active
participation in the Society, including stints on the Education and
Off-Year Workshop Committees.  This culminated in 2011, when my colleague
Jim Tabery and I served as the Local Organizing Committee for ISHPSSB Salt
Lake City.  I have always sought to introduce innovation in my leadership
roles within the Society, and am excited for the opportunity to maintain
that on the Council. My research focuses on taxonomy, systematics,
phylogenetics, and evolutionary theory.  My primary interest is in how
biological theory, concepts, and practice align to generate research
problems, and how, in turn, studying these problems may identify core
conceptual and theoretical commitments of biology.  My work has appeared in
*Biology & Philosophy*, *Philosophy of Science*, and *Systematic Biology*,
among others.  ISHPSSB has been important to me and my professional
development.  I look forward to serving on the Council so that I may help
continue that tradition for others.


Maria Kronfeldner (Germany)

 Maria Kronfeldner is currently Junior Professor for Philosophy of Science
at Bielefeld University. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Max
Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin from 2006 to 2008 and
a visiting fellow in various places, e.g. University of Pittsburgh
(currently), University of Sydney, UNAM, Akademie Solitude, Harvard. She
received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Regensburg (2007).
Her research covers a number of topics within the history and philosophy of
the life sciences: creativity, cultural evolution, genetic causation,
causal complexity, nature-nurture, human nature, and classification. Her
publications have appeared in major journals of the field.  Motivation: My
first ISHPSSB-meeting was in Vienna (2003) and I was simply delighted: It
was the first time I had experienced a scholarly conference that was truly
welcoming to even newbies and outsiders of the field. Sessions were
international, intergenerational and interdisciplinary; there were lots of
women, something I wasn’t used to at all. It was a truly exceptional
opportunity to meet new colleagues, and to engage in endless, yet sincere,
discussion (rather than to just show off). The meeting gave me hope that an
academic career does not have to contradict the principles one otherwise
cherishes. It was nonetheless clear, though, that such a great spirit does
not fall out of heaven like manna. It needs active scaffolding, especially
in a time when the profile, and attendance, of ISHPSSB meetings are
exploding, and in a time when many things in academia are reduced to
numbers and economic or career efficiency. As a member of council, I would
make it my duty to help sustain the great spirit of the society.



 Alan Love (USA)

Alan Love is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Minnesota and a member of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science.
His areas of specialization are philosophy of biology and philosophy of
science. Alan’s research focuses on a variety of conceptual issues in
evolutionary and developmental biology with an emphasis on philosophical
questions about conceptual change, explanatory pluralism, the structure of
evolutionary theory, reductionism, the nature of historical science, and
interdisciplinary epistemology. He earned his PhD in 2005 from the HPS
department at the University of Pittsburgh and also holds Master’s degrees
in Philosophy (Pittsburgh) and Biology (IU-Bloomington). Alan has been an
ISHPSSB member since 2003. He is one of the founding editors of *Philosophy
& Theory in Biology* (a peer-reviewed, online, open-access journal), is on
the Steering Committee of &HPS (Integrated History and Philosophy of
Science), and is a member of the editorial boards for *Bioscience*, *Journal
of Experimental Zoology (Mol Dev Evol)*, and *Metascience*. One of his
primary motivations in running for the ISHPSSB council is to help the
society both maintain and stimulate a healthy, multidisciplinary balance of
history of biology, philosophy of biology, and sociology of biology.
Homepage: http://umn.edu/~aclove



 Erika Milam (USA)

Erika Milam is an Associate Professor of History at Princeton University.
She was in the process of pursuing a Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolutionary
Biology at the Univeristy of Michigan when she discovered the wonders of
the history of biology. She quickly switched gears and earned her Ph. D.
instead in the History of Science, at the University of Wisconsin. She held
a postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of
Science in Berlin and, before starting at Princeton, also worked at Clemson
University and the University of Maryland. Her research and teaching
interests include the history of evolutionary theory and animal behavior,
gender and science, and (if you insist) the history of science through
science fiction. She fondly remembers her first ISHPSSB meeting during the
hot summer of 2003 in Vienna, where she presented the preliminary results
of her dissertation research for the first time. She values ISHPSSB as an
interdisciplinary community that welcomes both established scholars and
newcomers.



Andrew Reynolds

Andrew S. Reynolds is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy
and Religious Studies at Cape Breton University in Sydney, Nova Scotia,
Canada. I did my PhD in Philosophy of Science at the University of Western
Ontario (1997) followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University
(1998-99). My research has recently dealt with the history and philosophy
of cell theory and cell biology. I became an ‘ISH’ member in 2003, and have
attended and presented at each meeting since, with the exception of
Brisbane in 2009. At the 2011 Salt Lake City meeting I organized with
Hannah Landecker a full day session on cell communication and cell
signaling which had 10 speakers from three separate countries representing
the disciplines of biology, history, philosophy, and sociology. Having just
finished a 3 year term as secretary and treasurer of the Canadian Society
for the History and Philosophy of Science (2009-2012), I would be very
happy to serve on council and to help expand the ISHPSSB’s reputation as *
the* venue for multi-disciplinary and international collaborations for the
study of biology.



María Jesús Santesmases (Spain)

I began my academic career as a PhD student in organic chemistry at the
Universidad Complutense (Madrid, Spain). After a brief postdoctoral period,
I began to work in the media and for the Spanish administration. Later, I
moved into the history of 20th-century biology with a project on the early
biochemists and molecular biologists in Spain. My current research is on
the history of penicillin in Spain and on the early days of cytogenetics in
the clinic. For me, participating on the Council would contribute to
meeting precisely the same objectives as for joining the society itself. I
always come to the ISHPSSB meetings to see colleagues and discuss topics
with them, to check my approaches so I can expand my views so they won’t be
too local, nor too global. I am here to listen more than to talk, although
I use to present at every meeting. In ISHPSSB, all of us learn about new
projects, new objects, new ways of distributing recognition, and we gather
with the founders and also with new members both in Europe and the
Americas. With the certainty that we are transferring to our stories the
cultures of our own time, I situate myself among a group of colleagues who
show each other ways of moving in and out of our own projects so as not to
get lost among uncertainties.



For Secretary:

Anya Plutynski (USA)

Anya Plutynski is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Utah. Her research is in the history and philosophy of biology. Currently,
she is working on a book on cancer and scientific explanation.  Her
interests in continuing to serve ISHPSSB are mainly to help facilitate
communication and the environment of mentoring and support which has
brought so many young scholars into successful careers in history,
philosophy and the social studies of biology.

  For Treasurer:

 Laura Perini (USA)

 Laura Perini is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at
Pomona College, and chairs the Science, Technology, and Society program at
the Claremont Colleges.   She has a master’s degree in Biology from the
University of California at Los Angeles, and received her PhD in Philosophy
from the University of California, San Diego in 2002.  She studies visual
representation in science, focusing on the use of images in the life
sciences.  Personal motivation: I have benefitted greatly from the
interdisciplinarity and open, friendly atmosphere of ISHPSSB meetings, and
I welcome the opportunity to make a contribution to the Society in return.



 For Program Co-chairs:

Mark Borrello (USA)
I am an associate professor in the Program in the History of Science,
Technology and Medicine at the University of Minnesota. My work has focused
on the evolutionary theory in the 19th and 20th centuries particularly on
the levels of selection. More recently I have been collaborating with some
biologists on the evolution of individuality and am developing historical
projects around this idea. Motivation: I gave my first professional talk at
ISHPSSB as a graduate student in Oaxaca, Mexico in 1999. Since then I
haven’t missed a meeting except Vienna 2003 when my son Nico was born. I
have served on the education committee, chaired the off-year workshop
committee so it seems time to work on the program. I am committed to
maintaining and increasing the interdisciplinarity that has characterized
ISH since its beginnings.



And

Rob Wilson (Canada)

 I began my career in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and
started working in the philosophy of biology only after teaching for a few
years at Queen's University, Canada. Both PSA and ISH have been natural
professional societies for me both to extend my knowledge of
empirically-sensitive philosophical work in the biological sciences and to
test out some new ideas.  With my growing interests in the past 5-10 years
in applications of biological knowledge to shape our species--eugenics,
biotechnology, transhumanism, disability--ISH meetings have provided
unparalleled opportunities to learn from a broad range of folks genuinely
interested in working across our disciplinary boundaries on these kinds of
topics.  It would be an honour to serve as a program co-chair for the
upcoming 2015 meeting and to contribute to the organization in this small
way. I received my BA from the University of Western Australia in 1986, and
after teaching philosophy with children and working as a computer
programmer (sort of), my MA and Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell University
in 1990 and 1992, respectively.  I have been a professor in the Department
of Philosophy at the University of Alberta, Canada, since July 2000, having
taught previously at both Queen's and the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign.  I have been the Director of Philosophy for Children
Alberta since 2008, and around that same time founded the What Sorts Network,
an international network of more than 60 researchers and community members
anchored in Canada. I currently direct the Community-University Research
Alliance (CURA) project, *Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada*,
which is working to provide a survivor-sensitive "living archives" on the
history of eugenics in Western Canada and its contemporary significance.
There's more stuff about me at my webpage.
Electronic Voting and the Election Process

In 2011, electronic voting was conducted through SurveyMonkey.com under the
management of Jim Griesemer. This time we decided to move to the IT support
at the Ecology Research Institute from the UNAM, to operate a secure,
anomymous, electronic election.

The procedure for voting is that each member in the members’ database will
receive an email invitation that looks like the one below, which was sent
to me during a test of the system. Those in the members’ database will
receive the invitation containing a link to the poll that is tied to the
member’s email address from Ana Barahona E. ([log in to unmask]).
This unique url prevents multiple votes (even if additional attempts are
made from other machines, accounts, or IP addresses). ISHPSSB will also
send an electronic announcement to the ISHPSSB listserv, announcing the
election. If you receive the listserv message but not an invitation from me
to vote, that may indicate your email address in the ISHPSSB database
(which you set when you last registered your membership) has changed or is
invalid. *It is important that you make sure a valid email address is
associated with your ISHPSSB membership*. To update your profile, go
to:http://ishpssb.onefireplace.com,
log in, and ‘View profile’ to verify your email address. If you receive the
listserv notice but not a voting invitation, email me at
[log in to unmask] (please note that this is my personal email
address and is different from the voting one) and I will work with
Secretary Plutynski to correct your information and manually send a voting
invitation. If you are unable to vote electronically, you may write to me
and I will send a paper ballot after removing your email invitation (if
any) from the voting system. Since I will have to enter voting data from
paper ballots by hand, please do not ask for a paper ballot unless you
absolutely cannot vote electronically. Snail mail will reach me at: Ana
Barahona, Departamento de Biología Evolutiva, Facultad de Ciencias, UNAM,
México 04510, México, D. F., México.

We expect to send the listserv notification of the voting dates for the
election in the second week of April. The poll will be open for two months,
Mid-April to Mid-June. The results will be tallied and presented to the
membership during the Members’ Meeting at the Montepellier conference in
July, 2013.

If you have rigorous spam filters set for your email account, you should
make sure you do not filter out email from me, Ana Barahona E. (
[log in to unmask]) or from ISHPSSB. You will have the entire
voting period (60 days) to log in by clicking the hot link in the email (or
pasting it into your browser), and voting by following the instructions at
the site. Once you visit the voting site, it will not be possible to vote
again using the link you already received.

The ballot fits on one page. You will check boxes for candidates following
the instructions. When you are finished selecting candidates, you click the
‘vote’ button at the bottom of the page, which will take you to a
‘revision’ window. If you click ‘No’, it will take you back to the voting
page where you can change your votes. If you click ‘Yes’, you will complete
and submit your votes and will then be locked out of the site until voting
is complete.

Sample invitation:

As a registered member of ISHPSSB, you are entitled to vote in the 2013
election of
officers. Please complete the on-line election by clicking on the link
below and following
the instructions.

Heres is a link to the election page:

http://132.248.49.59/votation

login: [log in to unmask]
Password: 4Ed53

This link is uniquely tied to this survey and your e-mail address. Please
do not forward
this message.

Thanks for you participation!



If the link is not "clickable", simply copy and paste the link into the
address line of your Web browser (e.g. Firefox, Internet Explorer).

Note: In voting for Council, members choose three of the seven candidates.