EIUI team members Bertrum MacDonald and James Ross presented the paper “Crossing Borders in Scientific Literature: The Case of Environmental Assessment Reports,” at the nineteenth biennial conference of the Canadian Science and Technology Historical Association / l’Association pour l’histoire de la science et de la technologie au Canada held at York University, Toronto, 6-8 November 2015.
To address the conference theme, “Science and Technology across Borders,” MacDonald and Ross drew on studies conducted in the EIUI research program on three state of the environment reports: the 2009 State of Nova Scotia’s Coast Report, the State of the Gulf of Maine Report, and the State of the Scotian Shelf Report. In each case, the reports were prepared to reach diverse readers in research and public policy communities as well as be accessible to the general public.
Based on documentary evidence and interviews with authors, editors, and readers, the paper showed how international models for environmental assessments were adopted and adapted to produce the reports. The conference opened with a keynote address by Dr. John Krige (Georgia Tech University) on “Regulating the Transnational Flow of Knowledge in Research Universities Today: the Role of the U.S. National Security State after 9/11,” and featured over about 50 papers and panels by historians, scientists, archivists, and museum curators.
