[INES Announce] Issue 17.1 of Engineering Studies

[Jessica Smith]

Greetings INES!

We are happy to share Issue 17.1<https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/test20/current>, hot off the presses in time for some summer reading for our members in the northern hemisphere.

All the best,
Jessica


Smith, J. M., Beddoes, K., Downey, G., Jesiek, B. K., Reddy, E., Riley, D., Rossman, J.,  Wylie, C., York, E., Marques, I., Konstantis, K., Mody, C. C. M. (2025). We have been here Before: Reflections on Engineering and Authoritarianism. Engineering Studies, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2025.2466994

Katz, E. (2024). The Nazi Bomb Project: A Case Study of Value Neutrality in Science and Technology. Engineering Studies, 17(1), 11–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2024.2425434

Scientists in Nazi Germany attempted but failed to build an atomic bomb or working nuclear reactor during the years of the Second World War, 1939-1945. Can philosophical meaning be drawn from this history? The history of the Nazi scientists and nuclear fission raises important issues concerning the alleged value-neutrality of scientific research and technological development. We can also ask whether there is an ethical dimension to the failure of the Nazi bomb project. Did the scientists who worked in the Third Reich make a moral decision not to complete the development of a working nuclear reactor and/or a usable nuclear explosive device? In this essay, I argue that Werner Heisenberg and other Nazi scientists fell victim to a value-neutral conception of science that led them to make unethical choices in support of the Nazi regime. The story of the Nazi bomb project exemplifies a more general philosophical point: if scientists fail to understand the social, political, and cultural context of their research they will be vulnerable to ethically wrong decisions.

Koheji, M. (2025). On Cooling and Comfort: The Engineering of Thermal Spaces in Bahrain. Engineering Studies, 17(1), 30–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2025.2460213

As global temperatures reach record highs, the use of air conditioning is becoming increasingly popular worldwide. In Bahrain, air-conditioning accounts for approximately 60–65 percent of electricity consumption in buildings. This article argues that the proliferation of air-conditioning in Bahrain is not simply related to its hot climate. It is also driven by engineering standards and practices related to thermal comfort. The article tracks the evolution of comfort standards from their creation in the U.S. in the 1920s, through their enrollment in British modernization policies in Bahrain, to the rise of adaptive comfort research from the 1970s to the early 2000s. By tracing these periods, it examines the role of comfort standards in establishing air-conditioning as a necessity in Bahrain. Drawing on interviews with engineers in contemporary Bahrain, the article further investigates how comfort standards are integrated into actual engineering practices. It demonstrates that engineers often adjust, and at times ignore, standards to deliver overcooled and uncomfortable thermal conditions. By combining historical and ethnographic inquiries, this article contributes timely insights into how comfort standards circulate and how they can produce conditions of discomfort in new places. In so doing, it also challenges the assumption that comfort standards generate homogenous thermal environments everywhere they are adopted. The broader conclusion is that contextual studies of comfort standards can open new avenues for intervention toward more sustainable thermal futures.


Plus – two book reviews!

Chahim, D. (2024). Engineering Modern Mexico: Technocratic Visions: Engineers, Technology, and Society in Mexico, edited by J. Justin Castro and James Alex Garza, Pittsburgh, PA, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022, 302 pp., $55.00 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0822-94748-6; ¡Alerta!: Engineering on Shaky Ground, by Elizabeth Reddy, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 2023, 226 pp., $40.00 (paperback; digital version available open access), ISBN: 978-0262-54551-8; La construcción de una nación. Historia de la ingeniería civil en México en el siglo XIX. Facultad de Ingeniería, by Edgar Omar Rodríguez Camarena, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2021, 408 pp., Open-access (PDF available from publisher website), http://www.ptolomeo.unam.mx:8080/xmlui/handle/RepoFi/17609, ISBN: 978-607-30-5296-2. Engineering Studies, 17(1), 51–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2024.2394028


Serfian Jogo, F., & Mere, S. Y. (2024). Cultures of Prediction: How Engineering and Science Evolve with Mathematical Tools: by Ann Johnson and Johannes Lenhard, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2024, $44.99 (eBook). Engineering Studies, 17(1), 56–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2024.2429078



Jessica M. Smith<https://www.jessicamsmith.net/> (she/her/hers)
Editor-in-chief, Engineering Studies<https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/test20>
Professor, Engineering, Design, and Society Department<https://www.mines.edu/eds/>
Colorado School of Mines


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