EP Training Grant Visiting Scholars Head Home

By Nathan Crowe
For the Center for Biology and Society's three visiting graduate students, spring break marked the end of their time here. After eight weeks in the Valley of the Sun, philosophy student Valérie Racine returned to the cold environs of the Rotman Institute at the University of Western Ontario. Jill Briggs and Shawn Miller returned to California, where they will continue their studies in, respectively, history of science and medicine at the University of California-Santa Barbara and philosophy of science and technology at the University of California-Davis.

During their stay here, Jill, Valérie, and Shawn were fully integrated into the Embryo Project activities. They attended the weekly writing and editing seminars and met with project leaders Jane Maienschein and Manfred Laubichler for further direction in their individual digital humanities interests. Jill and Valérie wrote several articles for the Embryo Project, fulfilling several pressing needs for the encyclopedia. Shawn, interested more in digital infrastructure, became extensively involved with the development of informatics tools.

While they were here, the visitors participated in a range of activities beyond their Embryo Project-related work. Valérie and Shawn attended reading groups focused on developmental evolution, and Jill enjoyed the lively conversations in the modern synthesis reading group. Like many of the graduate students at Center, the visitors also took advantage of the extensive opportunities at ASU, attending guest lectures by well-known academics on a regular basis and getting a chance to meet with many of them individually.

In addition, each of the visitors presented some of their work in our weekly seminar series, enriching our group and gaining valuable feedback in the process. Valérie, who presented a draft of her dissertation prospectus, commented after her presentation that her eight weeks in the Center for Biology and Society were "instrumental in helping me articulate my project even further. A large part of this was due to the interdisciplinary feedback I received from everyone at the center." Similarly, Shawn noted, "As a philosopher, the greatest benefit of spending time here was the opportunity to interact with historians of science on a daily basis. Really seeing and understanding how historians conceive and approach problems cannot be done adequately, in my experience, without spending a lot of time with them. The Center provides these opportunities because it takes interdisciplinarity seriously." For Jill, the training grant experience "inspired me to think about what digital projects I can create myself, and I've already started to work on potential grant applications."

In the end, all three of the students left with significant connections to the Embryo Project and to the Center for Biology and Society. We hope that they found their eight-week experience as beneficial as it was for us to have them here. We look forward to having them as an integral part of our community in the future.