This award supports travel and accommodation for five student-participants and five faculty speaker-participants from US academic institutions to participate in an international collaborative workshop in the history and social studies of the Life Sciences to be held at the Stazione Zoologica, Naples, Italy, 29 June - 6 July 2013. The aim of the Workshop is to develop advanced understanding of the ethical, cultural, and scientific practices associated with the topic of life and the artificial creation of life. The workshop will connect an international roster of specialized faculty with chosen graduate students and postdoctoral scholars from Europe, North America, the Near East, Russia, South America, and Asia.
Intellectual Merit
Workshop participants will engage with fundamental ethical and social questions in STS and in the history of the life sciences that are closely associated with the Workshop theme, creating life. The workshop will serve to produce highly educated science historians who can engage with the cultural issues emerging from the laboratory fabrication of life. Participants will discuss in depth six aspects of the core workshop theme moving from early notions about the generation of life in Antiquity to the latest research programs around the world attempting to create life artificially, either bottom-up by designing and constructing molecular building blocks, or top-down by starting with the creation of whole genomes. Sessions are arranged in highly focused seminar format, with intensive discussion of selected topics aided by keynote lectures that are followed by faculty-led discussion. The workshop will also serve to promote the development of a professional network in this important area of history of biology research.
Broader Impacts
This research agenda will probe the limits of contemporary science and technology, investigate the capacity to standardize, control, and manipulate life at the molecular level, and discuss the challenges for moral and ethical perceptions of the dignity and sanctity of life. Participants will be able seriously to engage with issues of concern to the public. The Workshop directly engages with topics of great public interest where the interaction of science and society come into high relief. The international dimension is also important in aiding the exchange of views and information about different national ethical, legal, and scientific practices on the topic of life and the artificial creation of life.
