Londa Schiebinger image

Londa Schiebinger

  • John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science
  • Professor of History
  • Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
Building 200, Room 027
Lane History Corner
Stanford University

 

(650) 723-2760 (voice)

Biography

Londa Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science in the History Department at Stanford University and Director of the EU/US Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment Project. From 2004-2010, Schiebinger served as the Director of Stanford's Clayman Institute for Gender Research. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Schiebinger received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1984 and is a leading international authority on gender and science. Over the past thirty years, Schiebinger's work has been devoted to teasing apart three analytically distinct but interlocking pieces of the gender and science puzzle: the history of women's participation in science; gender in the structure of scientific institutions; and the gendering of human knowledge.

Londa Schiebinger presented the keynote address and wrote the conceptual background paper for the United Nations' Expert Group Meeting on Gender, Science, and Technology, September 2010 in Paris. She presented the finding at the United Nations in New York, February 2011 with an update spring 2014. The UN Resolutions of March 2011 call for "gender-based analysis ... in science and technology" and for the integrations of a "gender perspective in science and technology curricula."

In 2011-2012 and 2018-2020, Schiebinger entered into major collaborations with the European Commission and the U.S. National Science Foundation to promote Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment. This project draws experts from across the U.S., Europe, Canada, Asia, and was presented at the European Parliament, July 2013. For a popular overview, see Gendered Innovations: Harnessing the Creative Power of Gender Analysis.

Schiebinger has also addressed the Korean National Assembly (2014). In 2015, she addressed 600 participants from 40 countries on Gendered Innovations at the Gender Summit 6—Asia Pacific, a meeting devoted to gendered innovations in research, development, and business. She spoke at the Gender Summit 10 in Tokyo in 2017. She has given seminars at the Japanese Science and Technology Agency in Tokyo, the Japanese Science Council, at Nature magazine in London, the George Institute in Sydney, the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, L'Oréal and UNESCO in Paris, the Global Research Council in São Paulo, the German Science Foundation in Bonn, and UK Research and Innovation in London, and the EDIS Symposium on Inclusive Research and Experimental Design, Francis Crick Institute in London, among others.

Schiebinger recently moderated the launch of American Association of University Women's launch of Solving the Equation: The Variables for Women's Success in Engineering and Computing at Samsung's Mountain View Campus (2015). Schiebinger also helped launch the League of European Research Universities' major report Gendered Research & Innovation, Brussels (2015).

Her study, "Housework is an Academic Issue," with Shannon Gilmartin, Academe (Jan/Feb. 2010): 39-44, was profiled on ABC News. A 30-minute interview on gender in science can be seen on Belgian television. Recent podcasts include: Does gender diversity lead to better science? (2018), Skeleton Wars, the History of Women in Science (2018), and The Secret Cures of Slaves (2018), and The Future of Everything (2019). See also The Robots are Coming! But Should They be Gendered? Schiebinger is a member of the Faculty Planning Committee for Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute. Her work on gender in AI was featured in Nature comment: Design AI so that it's Fair.

Schiebinger's work in the eighteenth century investigates colonial science in the Atlantic World. In particular she explores medical experimentation with slave populations in the Caribbean. Her project reconceptualizes research in four areas: first and foremost knowledge of African contributions to early modern science; the historiography of race in science; the history of human experimentation; and the role of science in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.

Londa Schiebinger has been the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize and John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Schiebinger has just been appointed a Distinguished Affiliated Professor at the Technische Universität, Münichen, and member of their Institute for Advanced Studies. She has also served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin, the Jantine Tammes Chair in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Groningen, a guest professor at the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, and the Maria Goeppert-Meyer Distinguished Visitor, Oldenburg University. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Endowment for the Humanities, Rockefeller Foundation, Fulbright-Hays Commission, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.

Londa Schiebinger was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (2013), the Faculty of Science, Lund University, Sweden (2017), and the University of Valencia, Spain (2018); the Interdisciplinary Leadership Award from Women's Health at Stanford Medical School, 2010; Prize in Atlantic History from the American Historical Association, 2005 and the Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society, 2005, both for her Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World. She also won the 2005 J. Worth Estes Prize from the American Association for the History of Medicine for her article "Feminist History of Colonial Science," Hypatia 19 (2004): 233-254. This prize goes to the author of an article of outstanding scholarly merit in the history of pharmacology. Her work has been translated into thirteen languages.

Londa Schiebinger's research has been featured in Forbesthe Times Higher EducationLe MondeLa RechercheWorld Economic Forum, El PaísThe New YorkerDiscovHerEuroScientistUniversity World NewsMoneyish, the New York Times, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitschrift, La Vanguardia, at the London Museum of Natural History, on NPR, and elsewhere. She speaks and consults nationally and internationally on gender in science, medicine, and engineering.

Schiebinger is currently accepting graduate students in Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment and the History of Science.

 

publications

Policy Briefs
July 2020

Gendered Innovations 2: How inclusive analysis contributes to research and innovation

Author(s)
cover link Gendered Innovations 2: How inclusive analysis contributes to research and innovation
Journal Articles
November 2019

Sex and gender analysis improves science and engineering

Author(s)
cover link Sex and gender analysis improves science and engineering
Journal Articles
September 2018

Making gender diversity work for scientific discovery and innovation

Author(s)
cover link Making gender diversity work for scientific discovery and innovation