• Reader (Interdisciplinary Studies)

telephone: 01387702038
email: Sean.Johnston@glasgow.ac.uk

• Member of Executive Group, School of Interdisciplinary Studies
• Chair of Research Committee

Biography

I obtained BSc and MSc degrees in Physics from Simon Fraser University in Canada and my PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Leeds.  My career began as a physicist working at national laboratories (Canada's principal particle accelerator facility, its national optics laboratory, and  satellite image analysis centre) and as an R&D manager in Canadian and British engineering firms. One of my instruments was designed for the Space Shuttle; another comprises a measurement network, which continuously observes the aurora borealis in the Canadian arctic.  These varied working environments, clients and sponsors provided experience directly relevant to my subsequent research in the history and sociology of science and technology.  Before joining the University of Glasgow, I had taught both physics and the history and philosophy of science as a Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, and I was a historian of technology at the University of York.

My research interests focus on studies of science, technology and society (STS), and especially on how new technical professions and scientific knowledge develop hand in hand.  A recent research topic has been the historical sociology of holography, and my most recent focus has been the emergence of nuclear specialists. 

I am also affiliated with the Centre for Business History  in the University of Glasgow's College of Social Sciences, offering opportunities for co-supervision of research students. 

Grants

• The Nuclear Engineer: Shaping A Profession
  Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
  2007 to 2011
  
  
• At the Fringes: Optical Sciences in the 20th century
  Carnegie Trust
  2007 to 2008
  
  
• Conference travel grant
  Royal Society
  2005
  
  
• Holography and Holographers
  British Academy
  2002 to 2005
  
  
• Holography and Holographers
  Carnegie Trust
  2002 to 2006
  
  
• Oral histories of holographers
  American Institute of Physics Center for the History of Physics:
  2002 to 2007
  
  
• Art Holographers and Holography
  Shearwater Foundation
  2002 to 2007
  
  
• History of British chemical engineering
  Institution of Chemical Engineers
  1996 to 1999
  
  

Supervision areas

• History of science, especially in the 19th and 20th Centuries
• History of technology
• Social studies of science and technology
• Environmental history
• Social studies of professionalisation
• International or comparative approaches to any of the above

Current research students

Sotiris Frantzanas

• "Anarchism and the question of power"

Lena Hiltrop 

• "Assessing sustainable technologies in terms of co-benefits"

Past research students

Laura Ferguson

• "Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome? : Collective memory of the Vietnam war in fictional American cinema following the 1991 Gulf war"

Gillian Robertson

• "The acceptance and rejection of crematoria in Scotland as a case study of technological evolution"

Undergraduate

• Level 1: Science: History and Culture
• Level 2: Technology, Health and Society
• Level 3: Current Issues in Science, Technology and Medicine

Postgraduate

• Programme leader for the MSc in Environmental Science, Technology and Society
• Environment, Technology and Society
• Environmental History
• Environmental Ethics and Behavioural Change (with Dr Stuart Hanscomb and Dr Benjamin Franks)
• Supervision of postgraduate taught and research dissertations

The Science and Technology Studies courses in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies explore the cultural and intellectual changes wrought by science, technology and medicine, and draw upon the disciplines of social studies, history and philosophy of science and technology.

Prizes

• Paul Bunge prize of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (history of scientific instruments)
• Shorlisted for the Dingle Prize of the British Society for the History of Science (history of science for general audiences)
• George E. Davis Medal of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (engineering history)
• International Scholar of the Society for the History of Technology 

Learned societies

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Society for the History of Technology (SHOT)
• European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST)
• Society for Social Studies of Science (4S)
• International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC)
• British Society for the History of Science
• Institute of Physics (Chartered Physicist)
• Optical Society of America 

Conference and seminar papers

• 'The secrecy and counterculture of holography', Understanding Technology, National Museum of Scotland / University of Edinburgh, 2012
• 'How colour was tamed', Farb Wissen, Universitat Technische Berlin, 2010
• 'Defining the nuclear engineer in the UK, USA and Canada, 1940-65', 7th Meeting of Science and Technology in the European Periphery, Galway, 2010
• 'The atomic cloister: secrecy and the shaping of technical identity, 1940-60', British Society for the History of Science Annual Meeting, Aberdeen, 2010
• 'Other dimensions of holography: the historical, social and cultural', Photons, Neurons and Bits: Holography for the 21st Century, MIT, 2009
• 'Studying marginalised physical sciences', ‘Writing the History’ of the Physical Sciences after 1945: State of the Art, Questions, and Perspectives, Strasbourg, France, 2007
• 'The postwar American scientific instrument industry', High-Tech Postwar Industry workshop, Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia, 2007
• 'The history of holography: multiple visions', Seventh International Symposium on Display Holography, St. Asaph, UK, 2006
• 'Holography: A history (and a future?) of expansion', Holopack-Holoprint Conference 2006, Vienna, Austria, 2006
• 'Scientists, artists and artisans: the making of holographic communities', Royal Photographic Society Holography Group meeting, London, 2005
• 'From classified research to 'public access holography': equipment as social liberator', British Society for the History of Science 2004 Annual Meeting, Liverpool, UK, 2004
• 'Holoscopes, wave photographs and lensless photography: changing visions of holography', International Conference on Optical Holography and Its Applications, Kiev, Ukraine, 2003
• 'Scientific instruments and their cultures', Jahrestagung Chemie der Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, Munich, Germany, 2003
• 'Reconstructing the history of holography', Annual meeting of the International Society of Optical Engineering, Santa Clara CA, 2003
• ‘Mixing disciplines: the measurement of light nad colour during the twentieth century’, La Mesure au Croisement de la Physique, de la Physiologie et de la Psychologie, CNRS, Paris, 2003
• ‘An unconvincing transformation?  Michelson's interferential spectroscopy’, The Making of the Spectroscope, Deutsches Museum, Munich, 2001
• ‘Informing, teaching or propagandizing? Environmental and Science Studies for undergraduates’, Taking Nature Seriously, University of Eugene, Oregon, 2001
• ‘From eye to machine: shifting authority in colour measurement’, Theories, Technologies and Instrumentalities of Colour, Institute of Philosophy, University of Leuven, Belgium, 2000.
• 'Dogged by war: the professionalisation of the chemical engineer in Britain', Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, London, 1998.
• (with Colin Divall): 'War, efficiency, and a new industrial order: origins of organised chemical engineering in Britain', Society for the History of Technology annual meeting, Baltimore, 1998.
• 'Professionalising the chemical engineer in Britain', International Sociological Association Biennial Congress, Montreal, 1998.
• 'Locating the chemical engineer: the role of sponsorship in professional identity', International Sociological Association Meeting, Gothenburg, 1998.
• 'Transforming spectroscopy: tactics of an emergent community', Historical Conference on Research-Technology, CNRS-Sorbonne, Paris, 1997.
• (with Colin Divall) 'The evolution of intellectual apparatus associated with developments in bulk chemical manufacturing in Britain to 1939', Determinants in the Evolution of Chemistry, European Science Foundation, Strasbourg 1996.
• 'Lighting the Way? Illuminating Engineering in America and Britain', Society for the History of Technology annual meeting, London, 1996.
• 'Sharing, straddling or synthesising? Communities of light measurers', Third British-North American Meeting of the British Society for the History of Science, History of Science Society and Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, Edinburgh, 1996.

Book reviews 

Over 35 reviews in 12 journals, including Science and Public Policy, Technology and Culture and British Journal for the History of Science .

Related pages

Want to be more logical and persuasive? Try my Critical Thinking pages: unit 1 and unit 2.