Visiting Faculty

Conway, Jill Ker

kerconway@aol.com
Visiting Professor (STS)

Professor Conway received her B.A. in History and English from the University of Sydney (1958), and her Ph.D. from Harvard University (1969). In 1975 she became the first woman president of Smith College, and served ten years in that post. Professor Conway is a director in a number of major American companies and serves as a trustee on several foundation and university boards.

Her books include The Female Experience in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century America: A Guide to the History of American Women (1982), The Road from Coorain (1989), Written by Herself, volumes I and II (1993, 1995), When Memory Speaks (1998) and A Woman's Education (2001).

Hughes, Thomas P.

Mellon Professor Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania Distinguished Visiting Professor, MIT

Thomas Hughes did his graduate work in European History at the University of Virginia. He has published books on American and European history with special attention to the history of modern technology, science, and culture.

Networks of Power: Electrification of Western Society, 1880-1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983) and Elmer Sperry: Inventor and Engineer (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971) won the Dexter Prize for outstanding books in the history of technology. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870-1970 (Viking, 1989; Penguin, 1990) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History, 1990. With Agatha Hughes, he edited Lewis Mumford: Public Intellectual (Oxford University Press, 1990) and Systems, Experts and Computers (MIT Press, 2000). Among his essays are "Walther Rathenau: System Builder" in Ein Mann Vieler Eigenschaften: Walther Rathenau und die Kultur der Moderne (Klaus Wagenbach, 1990); L'Histoire comme Systemes en Evolution, (Annales, 1998), pp. 839-57; and Designing, Developing, and Reforming Systems (Daedalus, 1998), pp. 215-32. His most recent book Rescuing Prometheus (Pantheon Books, 1997) is about managing the creation of large technological systems. He is now completing a cultural history of technology since 1800.

Professor Hughes is a Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. The Society for the History of Technology awarded him the Leonardo da Vinci Medal; the Society for the Social Studies of Science gave him the John Desmond Bernal Award. The Johns Hopkins University named him a member of the Society of Fellows. The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Engineering in 2000 and Northwestern University conferred a Doctorate of Humane Letters in 2001.

He has been a Visiting Professor at the Wissenschaftszentrum (Center for the Study of Social Sciences), Berlin; the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm; Technische Hochschule, Darmstadt; New School for Social Research; Stanford University; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study, Berlin. Among his fellowships are the Guggenheim and Fulbright. He has been chairman of the Department of the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania; chairman of the NASA History Advisory Committee; chairman of the U.S. National Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science; and president of the Society for the History of Technology. He has been a presenter for BBC/NOVA and Swedish National Television. He has been a history consultant for ABC Television. He chaired a National Research Council Committee on "Computing and Communications: Lessons from History" and is a member of the NRC Committee on Technological Literacy. Agatha Hughes (1924-1997) has been his long-time editor and adviser.from History and is a member of the NRC Committee on Technological Literacy. Agatha Hughes (1924-1997) has been his long-time editor and adviser.

Maglo, Koffi

kmaglo@mit.edu

Visiting Scholars

McCann, Anna

mccann@mit.edu

(maritime archaeology)

McElheny, Victor

mcelheny@mit.edu

(biography of James Watson)

Perin, Constance

cope@mit.edu

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/