Comparative Studies

Comparative research is conducted in collaboration with two funded research projects: the Comparative Interoperability Project (CIP) and the National Centers for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) ‘community engagement project’. The goal of these projects is to understand the various approaches that large-scale science endeavors within the earth and ecological sciences have taken to producing data interoperability and long-term data preservation. As with the dissertation, my future research will continue to address the challenge of aligning policy, the institutions of science, and the opportunities posed by recent developments in information and computational technique. The comparative perspective will permit a more generalized understanding of the consequences on knowledge production of organizational and technological configurations in the sciences. In total five cyberinfrastructure projects are included in this research, drawing from many disciplines but focusing on the earth and environmental sciences. This range allows for rich contrasts and insight across individual projects.

This article summarizes the CIP rationale for comparison:

“Comparative Interoperability Project: Configurations of Community, Technology, Organization” Proceedings of the Second ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (2005)(Author list: Ribes, Baker, Millerand, Bowker)

Download in .pdf

The CIP Team: Karen Baker, David Ribes, Florence Millerand, Geoffie Bowker

AcademaToons

Life in the iBureaucracy (from the eyes of an artiste)



My Visit to CHI (oh, don't be so sensitive!)

After the thesis defense.

A metaphorical, but accurate representation of the thesis defense.

Links

Institutions and Projects

Communication, Culture & Technology -- Georgetown University Interdisciplinary Masters Program

Comparative Interoperability Project (CIP) -- A collaboration of multidisciplinary researchers studying various information infrastructures for the sciences.

School of Information, UMich

Science and Technology Studies, UMich

Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work (CREW), UMich


Science Studies, UCSD

People

Geof Bowker, my lovely advisor who works on the history of computing, biodiversity, standards and classification.

Steve Epstein, my lovely advisor who works on social movements, medicine, standards, race, sexuality and the state.

Tom Finholt, my lovely advisor who works on collaboratories and cyberinfrastructure.

Ann Zimmerman, a lovely colleague who works on data reuse and standards, cyberinfrastructure, evaluation and the TeraGrid.

Karen Baker, a lovely colleague who is an information manager and works on collaboration and infrastructure.

Il-hwan Kim, a lovely colleague focusing on design and human-computer interaction.

Janet Vertesi, a lovely colleague that works on visualization, mapping, and an ethnography of the Mars rover expedition.

Fall Conference Schedule -- 'The Long Term Series'

This fall I'll be attending three conferences. At each I'll be exploring a different facet of my research on building infrastructure for the long-term.

E-Social Science -- Ann Arbor -- 'Six Tensions in Developing Long-Term Infrastructure': Along with Tom Finholt I'll be presenting on six tensions that actor's describe as they go about the work of developing scientific information infrastructure.

Social Studies of Science -- Montreal -- 'Consequences of the Long-Term Today': How are the goals of developing 'long term cyberinfrastructure' impacting the funding, organization and practice of science today?

GROUP -- Sanibel Island -- 'Across the Scales: Designing Infrastructure for the Long-Term' : Along with Tom Finholt I'll be presenting on our research which explores actor's work as they simultaneously seek to engage institutional, organizational and technological 'scales' to create persistent informational resources for the sciences.

Communities and Technology Conference

Karen Baker and presented our paper, Modes of Social Science Engagement, at the Communities and Technology Conference (C&T2007 - June 28-30).

We also attended the attached workshop on Geof Bowker's concept of 'Memory Practices'.

Finally, and most surprisingly, I was asked to be a (fill-in) panelist for the 'Enabling Communities in Cyberinfrastructure' keynote. In a hastily prepared, but stellar, presentation I talked about sustainability, stability and maintenance work.