STS: John Durant. Back to Faculty List MIT Museum Director and Adjunct Professor in the Science, Technology & Society Program John Durant received his BA in Natural Sciences from Queens' College, Cambridge in 1972 and went on to take a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science, also at Cambridge, in 1977.
After more than a decade in University Continuing Education (first, at the University of Swansea in Wales, and then at the University of Oxford), in 1989 he was appointed Assistant Director and Head of Science Communication at the Science Museum, London and Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Imperial College, London.
In 2000, he was appointed Chief Executive of At-Bristol, a new independent science centre in the West of England. He came to MIT in July 2005, to take up a joint appointment as an Adjunct Professor in the STS Program and Director of the MIT Museum. Historical Amnesias: An Interview with Paul Connerton. In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera wrote: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
This perspective—one that bears the marks of life under a totalitarian regime in which repression often took the form of enforced forgetting—assumes that remembering is always a virtue and that not doing so is necessarily a failing. But despite dominating much of the debate on cultural memory, this perspective elides the many differences between all the various acts that we cluster under the term “forgetting.” Are all acts of forgetting similar enough that we can think of them, always and necessarily, as a failure? Can forgetting in fact even be a virtue? And how do we understand the relationship between what needs to be forgotten in order for other things to be remembered?
We first discovered your work through your essay “Seven Types of Forgetting.” In some sense, memory studies is really a phenomenon of the last quarter century. Yes. Doreen Massey: Space, Place and Politics. Anthropology: Faculty - Christine J. Walley. 21A.550J / STS.064 DV Lab: Documenting Science Through Video and New Media Introductory exploration of documentary film theory and production, focusing on documentaries about science, engineering, and related fields.
Students engage in digital video production as well as social and media analysis of science documentaries. Readings drawn from social studies of science as well as from documentary film theory. Uses documentary video making as a tool to explore the worlds of science and engineering, as well as a tool for thinking analytically about media itself and the social worlds in which science is embedded. Class includes a lab component devoted to digital video production in addition to class time. Video work from this class has been presented at special screenings at the MIT Museum as well as in other venues. 21A.551J Advanced DV Lab: Documenting Science Through Video and New Media 21A.461 What is Capitalism?
21A.400 The Stakes of International Development 21A.410 Environmental Struggles. Cohn, Simon. Leading the Unit's Social Science Group and the Social Analysis of Health Network (SAHN).
For the SAHN full web resource, see here. I am a medical anthropologist who has been appointed by the Primary Care Research Unit to strengthen applied research initiatives that draw on social theories and mixed methods. I oversee social science components in a number of different reserach programmes within and beyond the Unit, and am a member of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit. In the past, I have used a range of qualitative techniques to investigate ideas of health amongst patients and medical professionals – particularly in relation to chronic conditions. I have published work on diabetes, ME/chronic fatigue, gulf war syndrome, and the impact of neuroscience in psychiatry.
I am also organising the third ESRC Sociology of Diagnosis one-day workshop for this autumn. Kirsten Blinkenberg Hastrup – Københavns Universitet. VUB Artificial Intelligence Lab. School of Social and Political Science. Guidance and Feedback Hours During Semester Tues 9.00-11.00 and Thurs 9.00-11.00 Research Interests happiness and social progress poverty and education social development policy and planning human rights civil society forestry and environmental change South Asia (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu) Africa (Rwanda) Indonesia PhD Supervision Interested in supervising students in areas related to: Social development; happiness; well-being Biographical Statement Neil Thin specialises in the application of multidisciplinary happiness and wellbeing scholarship to social planning.
He has frequently served as a social development adviser and trainer for international development agencies such as the UK Department for International Development, UN Agencies, the World Bank, and international NGOs. Selected Publications 2012 Social Happiness: Research into Policy and Practice. 2012 ‘Anthropology.’ 2011 ‘“No-one is unmusical”. 2007, 'Schooling for Joy? 2002, Social Progress and Sustainable Development. Michael D. Jackson. Roy D'Andrade home.