This dissertation concerns the role of place in scientific practice. Ideas of place, I argue, shape and are shaped by science. I specifically look at the community of planetary scientists who, though they cannot step foot ...

This dissertation investigates the role of software in institutional transformation using the example of Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs. It ethnographically tracks the development of the software infrastructure being ...

In this dissertation, I trace methods for organizing skilled workers engaged in creative, limited-term projects in the United States between the nineteenth century and the 1950s. Examining eras of system building in technical ...

This study of the changing practices and perceptions of prediction in the late nineteenth century reveals the process by which Americans came to rationalize economic and cultural uncertainty into modern life. Forecasts of ...

This thesis examines the historical conditions that have contributed to high rates of vaccine innovation in the U.S. during the twentieth century. Empirical analysis of vaccine license data demonstrates that the highest ...

This dissertation examines how the proliferation of digital mapping technologies and the contraction of government research institutions have reformatted contests over resources, sovereignty, and local belonging in the ...

"The Soviet Farm Complex" is a history of food, farming and the environment in the postwar Soviet Union. It tells the story of how different technical and institutional authorities created an industrial Soviet countryside ...

The general post-Soviet decline of the states of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) mirrors specific declines in the robustness of these states' stocks of financial, physical, ...