[INES Announce] Announcing the 2025 INES Best Paper Award

[Wylie, Caitlin D. (cdw9y)]

Dear colleagues,
INES is delighted to bestow this year’s Best Paper Award upon Sangwoon Yoo for his paper, "Technological Origins of the Korean Semiconductor Industry”, published in The Korean Journal for the History of Science 47:2 (2025), 201-233. Congratulations! (Access the paper here<https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/landing/article.kci?arti_id=ART003239569> by clicking on the “PDF” button.)

The INES Award Committee unanimously selected Prof. Yoo's paper as the winner. Here are their comments:

Sangwoon Yoo has written a fascinating account showing how Korea’s semiconductor industry rose to a dominating position over many decades. He has written about a combination of ingenuity fostered by extreme hardship during the Korean war in the early 1950s, temporary exodus from consequent devastation seeking education and employment opportunities, and purposeful investments and alliances that enabled huge companies like Samsung to grow and flourish. The committee was particularly impressed by his meticulous research from original and archival sources. His argument is particularly pertinent for contemporary policymakers: the free movement of people and ideas fosters the evolution of new technologies to address challenges we all face today.

The panel would also like to commend the authors of the following papers:

Giulia De Togni for “Staging the Robot: Performing Techno-Politics of Innovation for Care Robotics in Japan,” East Asian Science, Technology and Society 18(2): 196-213. https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2023.2295144

The award committee found Giulia De Togni’s first person account of her interactions with researchers developing socially assistive robots (SARs) both refreshing and challenging. SAR technology aims to improve the care of elderly and disabled people. She has portrayed researchers who were trying to persuade their communities that SARs will be safe, reliable and will improve productivity in the care sectors of the economy of Japan and Britain. Yet, these same researchers were nervous when they allowed her to take control of their robots lest she accidentally damage their precious creations or expensive lab equipment. Their robots were neither reliable nor safe. She challenges the techno-scientific imaginaries that researchers promote to gain funding, and governments promote to persuade communities to accept both greater risks and problematic consequences in the name of national development.

Corinne B. Shaw & Bruce Kloot for "Engineering under oppressive regimes: exploring the role of engineers during apartheid South Africa," European Journal of Engineering Education, 50:3, 493-511, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03043797.2024.2419399?af=R

Corinne Shaw and Bruce Kloot impressed the award committee with a fascinating study of apartheid-era engineers and how they navigated the social tensions in South Africa at the time. Political isolation necessitated government investments in technologies to circumvent international sanctions, providing talented engineers with opportunities to develop “cutting edge” technologies. Some engineers just “sat through the middle of it”. Others found they could push the boundaries, bit by bit, and at least prepare for the more liberated society that emerged in 1994. This research challenges the political neutrality of engineering that necessarily serves powerful society interests providing necessary resources and finance.

Please join us to celebrate these authors at an online INES event this winter (date and details forthcoming).

The panel would like to congratulate all the authors whose articles were nominated. The standard of entries was very high and reading their work was interesting, informative and inspiring. Many thanks to all the authors for their important work, to everyone who nominated papers, and to our Award Committee members for their thoughtful work!

All the best,
Caitlin (INES chair) and the INES Award Committee:
James Trevelyan (chair)
Annie Patrick
Ashley Shew
Karin Wolff
Denver Tang
Peter Meiksins
Ryan Hearty
Sarah Appelhans
Stathis Arapostathis
Yunus Telliel


______________________

Caitlin D. Wylie, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Program in Science, Technology and Society

University of Virginia

she, her, hers

https://engineering.virginia.edu/faculty/caitlin-donahue-wylie



To learn how technicians and volunteers contribute creativity and problem-solving to scientific research, please read Preparing Dinosaurs: the Work behind the Scenes<https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/preparing-dinosaurs>, available open-access from the MIT Press.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.inesweb.org/pipermail/announce-inesweb.org/attachments/20251024/85ffd582/attachment.htm>