Dr. Heather Mellquist Lehto, Alumnae of the Designated Emphasis in Science and Technology Studies

hi I'm Heather milk with stiletto and I am a PhD candidate in anthropology at UC Berkeley Heather can you tell us a little bit about your PhD project yes so my PhD project looks at various questions concerning the relationship between technology and religion and I do that through an ethnographic study of transnational multi-site churches in South Korea and the United States so these are churches that means in multiple locations often by using various techniques and technologies to record the service in one location and broadcast it to campuses all across the world and so in my project I bring together a sort of critical study of religion via secular studies and an STS lens to look at how Christianity and conceptions of Technology and technological objects are co-constructed in practice in these contexts what kinds of technologies did you look at so they were largely they're primarily audio-visual technologies so I looked at various projection technologies various ways that they related to sound architecture plays a role in one of my chapters as well as other sort of technology what we might call technologies of management so so you have various various sorts of techniques and recording apparatus that they that they borrow from businesses and the corporate world in order to manage how their church is organized in functions so one of the great things about systems is that it's full of people from all sorts of departments across the canvas people who have many different kinds of expertise and one of our goals is to get everybody together and have them kind of mix and benefit from each other I'm curious while you were here at Berkeley did you have any of these interactions with people from other departments that you think benefited your project absolutely I mean being at systems was at various stages of my project really really beneficial in the beginning it was a great place to sort of identify what types of projects were being done across the university that had to do with science technology and medicine and so I could sort of learn to I started to learn who was engaging in these projects and where I might go to find more information you know potential you know people to to discuss my work with and collaborate systems has also provided through the coursework that is recommended through the designated emphasis a sustained engagement with the literature and STS as well as discussions with various graduate students in history and policy and sociology about these theories and I think that has helped to sort of develop our projects in dialogue with one another and then more recently working with the working group and the writing seminar that's really helped to to hone my work not just in terms of its its depth but in terms of how well I can learn to communicate my project to a broader audience across these disciplinary sort of boundaries what do you think was the most exciting thing that you did through systems in your time at Berkeley I really enjoyed the the required classes honestly I thought that the the introductory kind of Pro seminar was was really valuable as well as the writing course but I also I thought that the you know the conference's that have taken place over the seven years that I've been here I've been just fascinating and the Center has been so great about bringing in really interesting scholars from all over the world to share their work and I think that's been really exciting to me to to be able to speak with these people and to get a broader understanding of just how widespread these questions are and the various ways in which people are engaging with it the world that that's been very exciting what do you hope to do with your project moving forward well next year we'll be starting a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto that's my I will be primarily situated in the anthropology department but beyond that you know I hope to revise my dissertation into a book I'm beginning to publish a number of my pieces into articles that are published in journals and in the future I hope to be a professor somewhere and regardless of whatever an apartment that I'm in an anthropology or religious studies or Korean Studies or what-have-you I hope that that I can be engaged in STS

Channel: CSTMS Berkeley

Views: 91

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Science and Technology Studies, Sociocultural Anthropology, Korean Studies

Id: LiXuPKgnlKI

Length: 5min 5sec (305 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 21 2019