Laurel Smith-Doerr
Laurel Smith-Doerr
Associate Professor
PhD, University of Arizona (1999)
Sociology 257 | 617.358.0633 | ldoerr@bu.edu
Homepage: http://people.bu.edu/ldoerr/
BIO AND RESEARCH
Laurel Smith-Doerr is a sociologist who investigates how science, gender, and organizations are connected and become institutionalized in contemporary knowledge-based communities. With co-authors, Laurel conducts research on interorganizational collaboration, implications of different organizational forms for women’s equity in science, gendering of scientific networks and scientists’ approaches to social and ethical responsibilities, and tensions in the institutionalization of science policy. Results of this research have been published in her book, Women’s Work: Gender Equity v. Hierarchy in the Life Sciences (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004) and scholarly journals including Administrative Science Quarterly, Minerva, Regional Studies, American Behavioral Scientist, Sociological Forum, Industry & Innovation, Sociological Perspectives and Gender & Society.
Professor Smith-Doerr has held faculty appointments in the Boston University Department of Sociology since 1999. In 2004-5 she received a Jean Monnet fellowship to the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Study at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. In 2007-9 she was appointed as a Visiting Scientist and Program Officer in Science, Technology and Society at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, VA. She received the NSF Director’s Award for Collaborative Integration for her work at NSF in leading the Ethics Education in Science and Engineering program and on the committee implementing the ethics education policies of the America COMPETES Act of 2007. She has been elected to the Council of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) for a three year term beginning this year. In 2010-11 she is serving as the Chair of the BU faculty Women in Science and Engineering (WISE). She received her BA from Pomona College in Claremont, CA and her MA/PhD from University of Arizona.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
2008. “Women Inventors in Context: Disparities in Patenting in Academia and Industry.” Gender & Society 22 (2): 194-218. With Kjersten Bunker Whittington.
2008. “Decoupling Policy and Practice: How Life Scientists Respond to Ethics Education.” Minerva 46: 1-16.
2007. Chapter 28 in Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by J. Wajcman, E. Hackett, O. Amsterdamska and M. Lynch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. With Jennifer L. Croissant.
2007. “Organizational Contexts of Science: Boundaries and Relationships between University and Industry.”
2006. “Learning to Reflect or Deflect? U.S. Policies and Graduate Programs’ Ethics Training for Life Scientists.” Pp. 405-431 in The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power, edited by S. Frickel and K. Moore. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
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