Details

Are you a STEM post-doc or faculty member interested in thinking more concretely about the social, political and ethical dimensions of your research? Maybe the climate crisis or the COVID-19 pandemic have left you wishing for new ways of thinking about how values and politics impact science? Perhaps you’ve wondered about how to build a more socially just research program or lab, but don’t know where to start? 

In this context, the Future Values Initiative is accepting applications for its first cohort of Future Values Fellows for the 2024-25 academic year. This program is designed to give faculty and post-docs in STEM fields an introduction to critical, feminist, and science and technology studies, with a focus on applying insights from these fields to their own research in theory and in practice. Fellows will receive a $1500 honorarium and be expected to attend four lunchtime sessions at Prospect House during the academic year (two per term), during which we will engage in a discussion of pre-circulated readings guided by experts in that particular field. Sessions will cover the following topics: 

• What do we mean when we say science is “objective” or “biased”? When and how do values and ideals influence the practice of science? (Nov. 13, 12-1:30 p.m.)
• How can scientists responsibly and sensitively consider sex and gender as variables in their research? (Dec. 4, 12-1:30 p.m.)
• How can scientists responsibly explore the genomic effects of race while still recognizing race as socially constructed? (Feb. 26, 12-1:30 p.m.)
• How should scientists think about ethical and epistemic risks associated with using artificial intelligence tools in their research? (April 2, 12-1:30pm)

Interested participants are invited to submit an application form by October 15, 2024.

About the Future Values Initiative 

Advances in science and technology have outpaced careful inquiry into their ethical implications. For example, new tools like CRISPR and large language models may hold tremendous potential for our collective benefit, but also exacerbate already existing social disparities. Our initiative recognizes that meeting these challenges is just as much a battle for our collective imaginations and ethical commitments as it is a set of technical problems to solve. Leveraging Princeton’s strengths in the sciences and the humanities, the Future Values Initiative supports scholarship that expands traditional approaches to normative inquiry and applied ethics of science and technology, critically examining present injustices by imagining and co-creating radically different futures. In particular, we envision new modes of scholarship, collaboration, and intellectual community-building where scientists gain tools to understand how values shape the production of science and how its benefits and costs are socially distributed, and where humanists are partners in the innovation process rather than critics after the fact.