[INES Announce] New issue of Engineering Studies!

[Jessica Smith]

Dear INES,

We are pleased to share our new issue of Engineering Studies, which includes two full-length research articles and three reports. If you attended ASEE in Montreal or are interested in what happens when engineers working for the public sector are asked to conform with private sector expectations (timely!), please pay special attention to Marie-Pierre Bourdages-Sylvain and Karolane Stebenne’s article. The reports include an excellent synthesis of the Fall 2024 INES online workshop – a special thank you to Sarah Appelhans and Ryan Hearty for this essential work of community building! I found their use of Calvert’s three modes of engagement – observation, intervention, and collaboration – to be very helpful for thinking about the wide range of work that people in our network do, and how can keep growing our community.

And as always, thank you to all of our Associate Editors and to those you who served as reviewers!

All the best,
Jessica

EDITORIAL

Smith, Jessica. “Introduction: Shifting Sands and Continuing Camaraderie.” Engineering Studies 17, no. 2 (2025): 61–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2025.2518354.


RESEARCH ARTICLES

Bourdages-Sylvain, Marie-Pierre, and Karolane Stébenne. “The Transformations of Professions Under New Public Management: The Case of Quebec’s Public Service Engineers.” Engineering Studies 17, no. 2 (2025): 65–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2025.2506372.

This paper focuses on the transformative dynamics within the state engineering profession, considering changes in public organizations. It examines New Public Management (NPM)-inspired practices and their influence on the work activity and commitment of engineers in Quebec, Canada. Based on Evetts’ typology of forms of professionalism, the paper aims to shed light on the little-known reality of state engineers and to report on the impacts of NPM-inspired practices on their professional practices and experiences. The results of twenty-one interviews with state engineers highlight the gradual spread of organizational professionalism, which places management at the heart of the process. This paper examines the resulting tensions and paradoxes in professional practices, particularly regarding their autonomy and professional responsibilities. Their work involvement is likely to be affected, especially when administrative tasks distract them from the most significant aspects of their activity.


Vera-Gajardo, Andrea, and Consuelo Dinamarca Noack. “Space Invaders in Engineering: Body, Gender, Knowledge Experience and Belonging in Engineering Students in Chile.” Engineering Studies 17, no. 2 (2025): 87–111. https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2025.2508228.

Gender studies in engineering have gained significant momentum in recent decades, particularly those that examine disciplinary culture. However, more research addressing the bodily or spatial perspectives remains to be done. This article contributes to understanding the relationship between embodied experience, knowledge experience, and the sense of belonging for women and Othered bodies in engineering. Using empirical data from 15 focus groups conducted across five universities in three cities in Chile, and employing an inductive qualitative approach, we demonstrate how a male bodily norm on engineering campuses continues to dictate who can be heard in the field of knowledge. This norm limits the recognition of ‘bodies perceived as out of place’ as valid bearers of knowledge. Our findings highlight the complex interplay between gender, body, and knowledge within engineering student communities.


REPORTS

Castaneda, Daniel I., Kenneth Stewart, and Azadeh Bolhari. “Mobilizing Cultural Wealth in Citizen Science: A Qualitative Inquiry of Spanish Language-Dominant Family Households in a Participatory Engineering Project.” Engineering Studies 17, no. 2 (2025): 112–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2025.2476952.

Citizen science and community-based engineering projects invite the general public to engage, yet these participatory projects can inadvertently perpetuate unwelcoming, deficit-based attitudes toward marginalized groups. This study sought to develop a citizen science-based participatory engineering project that invited family households from historically marginalized and vulnerable groups to develop, construct, and adopt an engineering solution against the threats of climate change. Several family households were recruited for the project, and recurring interviews were conducted with each family household throughout the project to evaluate each household’s changing attitudes toward engineering solution development. Through a thematic analysis validated using a Delphi coding process, the research team discovered that each family household readily mobilized their community cultural wealth (CCW) at various stages of the project. Specifically, the results indicate that each family household greatly leveraged their familial and social capital to meet the needs of the project. We speculate about how our findings might inform the design of future citizen science and participatory engineering projects. Our initial findings merit further study to fully understand the social science of citizen science and participatory engineering research. Pursuing such work has the potential to effect positive change in promoting science and engineering fields to historically marginalized populations.

Haugland, Bård Torvetjønn. “Thinking Like a Road: A Companion Piece to ‘Framing Intelligent Transport Systems in the Arctic.’” Engineering Studies 17, no. 2 (2025): 128–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2025.2476939.

At the Engineering Interventions workshop organized by the International Network of Engineering Studies (INES) in November 2024, Bård Torvetjønn Haugland, Marianne Ryghaug, and Roger A. Søraa were awarded INES’ inaugural Best Paper Award for the article ‘Framing Intelligent Transport Systems in the Arctic.’ The essay is a revised and expanded version of the lecture Bård Torvetjønn Haugland gave upon accepting the award and combines insights from ‘Framing Intelligent Transport Systems in the Arctic,’ Aldo Leopold’s influential essay ‘Thinking Like a Mountain,’ and the field of infrastructure studies. When combined, these insights suggest that infrastructures are fruitful sites for observing and understanding how engineers produce and reconstitute nature-culture hybrids in specific contexts, but also how these hybrids are constituents in another, larger order. The essay introduces the notion of thinking like an infrastructure, and discusses its descriptive aim, possible methodological approaches, and the prospect of shifting the concept from a descriptive to a normative mode.

Appelhans, Sarah, and Ryan Hearty. “Report on the Workshop, ‘Engineering Interventions: Interdisciplinary Engagements with Engineers’, 12–13 November 2024.” Engineering Studies 17, no. 2 (2025): 136–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2025.2517574.

On 12 and 13 November 2024, the International Network for Engineering Studies (INES) convened a virtual workshop titled ‘Engineering Interventions: Interdisciplinary Engagements with Engineers'. This workshop marked the 20-year anniversary of the INES network and was, therefore, an important opportunity to take stock of our work and our impact amongst the communities we serve. The call for papers proposed three questions: ‘What is the relationship between engineering studies scholars and engineers? What should that relationship be? What can we accomplish with and for engineers’? Sixty-two attendees from eleven countries offered insights, posed their own questions, and shared works-in-progress across eleven sections split over the two days. Here, we report our observations from the workshop and suggest future directions for the field of engineering studies.


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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