James S. Jackson, University of Michigan

Jackson’s research focuses on how culture influences our health during our lives, attitude changes, and social support. He has contributed enormously to our understanding of such diverse perspectives as race relations and racism around the world. For example, his research has highlighted how racial discrimination can affect physical and mental health and treatment. Jackson is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academies, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a founding member of the Aging Society Research Network of the MacArthur Foundation. He is a recipient of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for his lifetime of significant intellectual achievements in applied psychological research.

Chair
Douglas L. Medin
Northwestern University

In this symposium four scholars analyze diversity in science and explore the ways in which the nature of science may depend on who is doing it.

Margaret Beale Spencer, University of Chicago

A professor of Urban Education, Spencer studies resiliency, identity, and competence formation processes for African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American, and Euro-American youth. She designed a CNN study to test racial bias in children and was awarded the 2006 Fletcher Fellowship, which recognized work that furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Helen E. Longino, Stanford University

Longino’s teaching and research interests are in philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, social epistemology, and feminist philosophy. She has argued influentially for the significance of values and social interactions in the practices of science. Longino is well known for her books Science as Social Knowledge and The Fate of Knowledge.

Richard A. Shweder, University of Chicago

A professor of Human Development, Shweder is a cultural anthropologist whose research interests include psychological anthropology and cultural psychology. Over the past 40 years, he has conducted research in the Hindu temple town of Bhubaneswar, India. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the American Association for the Advancement of Science Socio-Psychological Prize.

Megan Bang, University of Washington

Bang’s work is broadly focused on issues of culture, cognition and development. More specifically she focuses on community-based and culturally based science education. Her academic work has explored the kinds and forms of explanations, arguments, and attentional habits Native American children are exposed to and learn in community settings as they relate to school science learning.