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Keynotes
Professor Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council, University Professor of the Social Sciences, New York University
Talk Title: Convenience or Transformation: What Should Social Scientists Want from e-Social Science?
Abstract
e-social science is already improving data infrastructures for social science. It promises new kinds of research as well, notably based on capacity to analyze transactional data. Still greater transformation would follow on reorganization of communication and collaboration among researchers. But most importantly, whether e-social science is transformative or merely helpful depends on whether its potential is recogized and creatively integrated into the develpment of new research problems by theoreticaly innovative scientists. To date this is lagging - in comparison to natural and physical science as well as in comparison to potential. e-social science is too often seen as a support system rather than science itself.
Biography
Craig Calhoun is University Professor of the Social Sciences at New York University where he directs the Institute for Public Knowledge. He is also President of the Social Science Research Council, an international leader in intellectual innovation and interdisciplinary research since 1923.
Calhoun received his doctorate from Oxford University. He taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for 19 years, serving also as Dean of the Graduate School and Director of the University Center for International Studies. He has been a visiting professor in China, Eritrea, France, Norway, and Sudan.
Calhoun has written on culture and communication, technology and social change, social theory and politics. His most recent books include Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream (Routledge 2007), Cosmopolitanism and Belonging (Routledge 2008) and two edited collections, Sociology in America (Chicago 2007) and Lessons of Empire: Historical Contexts for Understanding America's Global Power (with F. Cooper and K. Moore, New Press 2006). His new book, The Roots of Radicalism , will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2008.