S.NET | The S.Net Conference will be held at the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel in Tempe, Arizona on November 7-10, 2011. The conference, co-hosted by the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (CNS-ASU) and the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara (CNS-UCSB), will offer a poster session and plenary sessions featuring:

Nicholas Pidgeon, Professor of Environmental Psychology at Cardiff University, where he currently directs the interdisciplinary Understanding Risk Research Group, which looks at how public attitudes, trust, and institutional responses drive environmental and technological risk controversies, including those of nuclear power, climate change, and nanotechnologies.

Steve Rayner, Director, Institute for Science, Innovation, and Society and James Martin Professor of Science and Civilization at the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford. Rayner’s research interests include:  the relationship between nature and society as mediated by science and technology; management of environmental and technological risk; climate change and sustainable development; governance of emerging technologies.

Noela Invernizzi, an Anthropologist, with a PhD in Science and Technology Policy, is a faculty member at the Federal University of Parana, Brazil. For several years, Invernizzi has researched the impacts of industrial innovation on workforce skills and employment conditions. Her current research addresses the social implications of nanotechnology for development in Latin America with a particular focus on labor, poverty, and inequality issues.

Paul Rabinow, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, Director of the Anthropology of the Contemporary Research Collaboratory (ARC), and Director of Human Practices for the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC), is known for his development of an “anthropology of reason,” and for his widely influential commentary and expertise on the French philosopher Michel Foucault.  Rabinow’s work consistently has confronted the challenge of inventing and practicing new forms of inquiry, writing, and ethics for the human sciences.

Geri Augusto, a Watson fellow, is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Public Policy at Brown University’s Taubman Center, an honorary research associate at the Centre for African Studies in the University of Cape Town, and an associate fellow at the Centre for Caribbean Thought in the University of the West Indies. Her current research and practice focus on the dynamics and politics of knowledge in pluralistic societies and in complex interactive systems marked by power inequalities, particularly in Southern Africa, Brazil, the U.S., and the Caribbean.

Ann Bostrom, Professor of Public Affairs and Associate Dean for Research at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs in the University of Washington. Bostrom’s research includes risk perception, communication, and management; and environmental policy and management.

To learn more about this upcoming conference, please go to:  http://www.cns.ucsb.edu/SNet2011/program.