Organized by YCAR Faculty Associates Anna Agathangelou (Political Science) and Bernard Lightman (Humanities), Found in Translation: Cosmopolitics and The Value of Biotech will explore the nature of profound biotech change at the fundamental level of constitutional rights and the political structures of individuals and collectives.

The workshop will be held at York University from 3 to 5 November 2016.

The workshop's focus will be on cosmopolitan and biocapital perspectives on translation, exploring how tacit reliance on certain notions of value, epistemology, and global governance institutions transform, as science and reason travel between lab and market, lab and universities, market and society and vice versa. Another concern is the translation of biocapital and making value out of biomedical research, including its translation from lab to benchmark and benchmark to society, attending to the co-production of moral cosmopolitan worlds.

Panel topics will include: translation, value and valuation, capitalism, ethics, innovation, and the Global South.

The plenary speaker is Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies Director, Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. Her talk, Epistemic and Cosmopolitan Orders, will take place at 5:30pm on Thursday, 3 November in the Executive Dining Room, Schulich School of Business.

Workshop presenter Sundar Sarukkai, Professor of Philosophy at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, will give at talk at York on Science, Philosophy and non-Western Traditions of Knowledge. The talk will be held in Room 626 on the sixth floor of the Kaneff Tower on Monday, 7 November 2016. All are welcome.

This workshop was made possible with the generous support from: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Office of the Vice-President Academic & Provost, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York Centre for Asian Research, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Graduate Studies, Department of Social Science, and the Centre for Feminist Research.