November 2, 2017
New Genres For Scholarship
Please join us for a panel discussion on the mutating and evolving genres for scholarship in the digital age.
WHEN? Thursday, December 7, 2017, 10-12pm.
WHERE? Fong Auditorium, Boylston Hall, Harvard Yard
Four Harvard and MIT scholars will open with remarks on new genres, after which we’ll open up for discussion within the panel and questions from the audience.
The panelists represent the natural sciences, humanities, arts, and libraries. Pierre Bélanger is an Associate Professor of Urbanism, Landscape, and Ecology at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Robert Darnton is the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor of History and Harvard University Librarian, Emeritus. Jessica Polka is a Visiting Scholar at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Suzanne Wones is the Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies and Innovation at Harvard Library.
Peter Suber will moderate. Peter is the Director of the Harvard Library Office for Scholarly Communication.
We hope the discussion will stimulate imagination and new thinking on questions like these:
Why might we want new genres for scholarship? What are the potential benefits to authors and readers? What’s lacking in the current genres (primarily articles and books, but also datasets, databases, presentations, wikis, blogs, videos, podcasts...)?
What new genres are already emerging? What do they bring to research and scholarship?
What new genres do the panelists and audience participants use, recommend, or wish to see?
What are the obstacles to the emergence of new genres?
What tweaks would enable open-access repositories like DASH and Dataverse to accommodate new genres that they cannot currently accommodate?
Here’s a bit more on each of the panelists.
Pierre Bélanger is a landscape architect, urban planner, and media designer. As Associate Professor of Urbanism, Landscape, and Ecology at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, he teaches
graduate and postgraduate courses on the convergence of ecology, media, infrastructure, and urbanism in the interrelated fields of design, planning, and engineering. As author and editor, Dr. Bélanger has published several books and projects including “LANDSCAPE AS INFRASTRUCTURE,” “ECOLOGIES OF POWER” co-authored with Alexander Arroyo, Pamphlet Architecture 35 “GOING LIVE: from States to Systems,” (pa35.net), and Harvard Design Magazine #39 “WET MATTER” co-edited with Jennifer Sigler (@lowlowtide). As practicing designer, he received the Canada Prix de Rome in Architecture and was Curator & Director for the controversial Canada Pavilion and Exhibition “EXTRACTION” at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale (@1partperbillion). In collaboration with a range of creators and scholars, he is currently
completing an edited volume and film titled “EXTRACTION EMPIRE”, profiling the scales, states, spaces, and systems of the largest extraction nation on the planet.
Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Harvard University Librarian, Emeritus, was educated at Harvard University (A.B. 1960) and Oxford University (B.Phil. 1962, D. Phil. 1964), where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He taught at Princeton University from 1968 until 2007 and at Harvard until his retirement in 2015. The last of his many books on cultural history are Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in
Eighteenth-Century Paris (2010), and Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature (2014).
Jessica Polka, PhD is a Visiting Scholar at the Whitehead Institute and Director of ASAPbio, a biologist-driven project to promote the productive use of preprints in the life sciences. She performed postdoctoral research in synthetic biology in the department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School following a PhD in Biochemistry from UCSF. Jessica serves as president of the board of directors of Future of Research, a steering committee member of Rescuing Biomedical Research, a member of the NAS Next Generation Researchers Initiative, and a member of ASCB’s public policy committee.
Suzanne Wones is the Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies and
Innovation at the Harvard Library. She leads the development and implementation of digital strategies for the Harvard Library community by extending Harvard Library’s reach in digital scholarship and data management. Wones works to identify and examine trends in information technology and digital library development in coordination with multiple departments spanning the Library and Harvard University Information Technology (HUIT). During her fifteen years as a Harvard librarian, Wones has advocated for user-focused innovations and developed creative solutions to advance the mission of the University.
This event is sponsored by the Harvard Library Office for Scholarly Communication.
We hope you can join us on December 7.