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Geoffrey C. Bowker

Department of Communication

University of California, San Diego

9500 Gilman Drive

La Jolla, CA 92093-0503

Phone 858/534-7192

fax 858/534-7315

email:

bowker@ucsd.edu

WebSite:

http://weber.ucsd.edu/~gbowker/

Geoffrey C. Bowker (Geof) is Professor in the Department of Communication at UC San Diego, and Adjunct Professor of History. He received his PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Melbourne in 1984. He then studied for several years in Paris with Bruno Latour at the Ecole des Mines. At this time he developed an interest in social studies of technology and information - his first book Science on the Run: Industrial Geophysics and Information Management at Schlumberger explores these themes. He then worked in Keele (Department of Sociology) and Manchester (Center for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine) where he studied the history of cybernetics. Here again, the relationship beteween technology (the emerging computer) and information was central to his analysis.

He then moved to Illinois, and carried out with Susan Leigh Star a project on classification systems in medicine and other fields. Here the central question was how information infrastructures (in the form of databases, classification systems, forms etc) modulate the kind of knowledge/power they undergird. The resultant book: Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences is available from MIT Press. He is currently writing a book on archival practices in the sciences over the past 200 years.

Full text of some publications and drafts can be found at:

http://weber.ucsd.edu/~gbowker/pubs.html

A description of the classification book with excerpts is at:

http://weber.ucsd.edu/~gbowker/classification