Awards

NASA Fellowship in the History of Space Technology

The NASA Fellowship in the History of Space Technology, offered by SHOT and supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) History Division, funds either a predoctoral or postdoctoral fellow for up to one academic year to undertake a research project related to the history of space technology. The fellowship supports advanced research related to all aspects of space history, leading to publications on the history of space technology broadly considered, including cultural and intellectual history, institutional history, economic history, history of law and public policy, and history of engineering and management. In 2017 SHOT, the History of Science Society (HSS), and the American Historical Association (AHA) brought their NASA Fellowship committees together. Each society continues to award a NASA Fellowship, but a committee consisting of one member from each organization will determine the winners of the three fellowships. This year's fellowship went to Dana Burton, of the George Washington University, for "Tracing Harmful Contamination in NASA's Search for Life on Mars," with the following citation:

The winner of the 2019 SHOT-NASA Fellowship is Dana Burton, a Ph.D. candidate in the George Washington University anthropology program. Burton was awarded this fellowship for her research project "Tracing Harmful Contamination in NASA's Search for Life on Mars," her dissertation analyzing contamination protocols for human and robotic space exploration. How has the concept of harmful contamination changed over time? What are the consequences of these successive definitions as research communities grapple with their understandings of life on and off Earth?

For her dissertation, Burton seeks to periodize how evolving definitions of life—and, by extension, microbial contamination—informed social processes shaping the technologies and techniques for determining acceptable contamination protocols. Situating her work at the intersection of the history of science and technology, Burton will investigate scientific instruments and missions as they affect (and are affected by) lab practice, policy, and mission parameters ranging from the 1960s to the present. Her project aims to contribute to literature investigating how the public, scientific, and policy communities each participate in frontier boundary-work, in particular addressing "who or what is allowed to be in outer space?" Burton will use her fellowship to research at the NASA Headquarters and Center archives, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Intriguingly, she proposes extending her anthropological analysis to the social forces of archival and records management practices, asking if and how these professional activities, too, shape the transfer of information across time and society.

Kranzberg Dissertation Fellowship

This award is in memory of the co-founder of the Society for the History of Technology and honors Melvin Kranzberg's many contributions to developing the history of technology as a field of scholarly endeavor and SHOT as a professional organization. The $4,000 award is given to a doctoral student engaged in the preparation of a dissertation on the history of technology, broadly defined, and may be used in any way chosen by the winner to advance the research and writing of that dissertation. The winner of this year's award was Samaa Elimam of Harvard University for "On Site: Engineering, Empire, and the Geography of the Nile Valley." The citation follows:

Samaa Elimam is recipient of the 2019 SHOT Kranzberg Dissertation Fellowship. Elimam is a Ph.D. candidate in the history of architecture, landscape, and urban planning in the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. She will use the fellowship to complete her dissertation "On Site: Engineering, Empire, and the Geography of the Nile Valley." Her study explores three ambitious engineering projects that exemplify efforts during the reign of Ottoman viceroy Mehmet Ali to expand and modernize Egypt: the Mahmudiyyah Canal (1816–43), the Alexandria dockyards (1828–36), and the administration of the Sudanese Nile (1821–65). This infrastructure sought to better connect Egypt in the north with the Mediterranean Sea and global markets, and to connect Egypt in the south from Aswan into Sudan and Africa.

In Cairo at the Egyptian National Archives, the Egyptian Geographical Society, and the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, and in Khartoum...