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Constance Perin

Room

Phone
617-621-1331
Email
cope@mit.edu
website
http://www.constanceperin.net/

Constance Perin is a cultural anthropologist specializing in the study of professional work, knowledge, and value systems. She is the author of four books and several articles analyzing American culture and professionals' work and careers. She has held Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Ford Foundation fellowships, two Rockefeller Foundation residencies at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center, and visiting appointments at several universities here and abroad. Since 1997 she has been a visiting scholar in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In support of her new book, "Shouldering Risks: The Culture of Control in the Nuclear Power Industry" (Princeton University Press, 2005), in 2000, she received a grant for Research and Writing from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Program in Global Security and Sustainibility. In 1998, she received an individual award from the National Science Foundation for a field-based study in the USA, "Hard and Soft Knowledge in High-Hazard Technologies." From 1990-1995 in the MIT International Program on Enhanced Nuclear Power Plant Safety at the Sloan School of Management, she carried out field studies, in the USA and abroad, of the relationship between safe operations and work and organizational systems,. In 1996-97, she co-organized a workshop, "Organizational Analysis in High-Hazard Industries: An Academy-Industry Dialogue" supported by the NSF, bringing together safety scholars and experts in chemical process safety. She has also carried out studies of groupware use and telecommuting at the MIT Center for Coordination Science. In the 1980's, also at the Sloan School, she studied the organizational implications of computer technologies in the "Management in the 1990s" research program.

Constance Perin received an AB and AM in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, a master's degree in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania, and her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from The American University. She is a member of the American Anthropological Association, the Society for Cultural Anthropology, and the Society for the Social Study of Science. For further bibliographical and biographical details, please go to: http://www.constanceperin.net/