Helen Verran

Verran is from New South Wales, Australia.{{Citation needed|date=July 2021}} She trained as a scientist and teacher in the 1960s (BSc, DipEd, University of New England) and has a PhD in metabolic biochemistry (UNE, 1972). She then spent eight years lecturing in science education at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ifẹ, southwestern Nigeria. In the 1980s she became a lecturer and later associate professor at the University of Melbourne, working in a unit dedicated to the study of history and philosophy of science. She retired in 2012.{{Cite web|title=A/Prof Helen Verran|url=https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/13380-helen-verran|access-date=7 July 2021|website=findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au}} On retiring she became adjunct professor at the Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University in Darwin, where she still teaches.{{Citation|last=Institute|first=Northern|title=Objects of Governance as our Familiars: Helen Verran|date=26 September 2013|url=https://vimeo.com/75547709|access-date=7 July 2021}}

Verran's book, Science and an African Logic (University of Chicago Press, 2001), received the Ludwik Fleck Prize in 2003.[https://web.archive.org/web/20210711213203/https://www.4sonline.org/prize/earlier-fleck-prize-winners/ Fleck Prize 1994: Earlier Fleck Prize Winners], accessed 2021-Oct-11 It analyses counting, and its relation to the ontology of numbers based on her lengthy field observations as a mathematics lecturer and teacher in Nigeria. The book draws on her sudden realisation of the radically different nature of Yoruba counting, and discusses how this realisation grounded her post-relativist theorising.{{cite journal|last1=Hallen|first1=Barry|year=2002|title=Review|journal=The International Journal of African Historical Studies|volume=35|pages=188–189|doi=10.2307/3097396 |jstor=3097396 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3097396|url-access=subscription}} Verran continues to nuance analytics of numbers and numbering as social and material practice (e.g. in the 2018 special issue After Numbers? Innovations in Science and Technology Studies’ Analytics of Numbers and Numbering).{{cite journal|last1=Lippert|first1=Ingmar|last2=Verran|first2=Helen|year=2018|title=After Numbers? Innovations in Science and Technology Studies' Analytics of Numbers and Numbering|journal=Science & Technology Studies|volume=31|pages=1–12|doi=10.23987/sts.76416 |doi-access=free}}

She contributed to actor-network theory, working with British sociologist John Law. Specifically, she is credited for contributing with postcolonial studies to nuancing STS.{{Cite journal|last=Law|first=John|date=28 April 2006|title=Pinboards and Books: Juxtaposing, Learning and Materiality|url=http://heterogeneities.net/publications/Law2006PinboardsAndBooks.pdf|journal=Heterogeneities|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170112220113/http://heterogeneities.net/publications/Law2006PinboardsAndBooks.pdf|archive-date=12 January 2017}} Her work is also seen as part of ANT's ontological turn.[https://www.academia.edu/download/54964282/New_ontologies_SA.pdf New ontologies? Reflections on some recent 'turns' in STS, anthropology and philosophy]{{dead link|date=July 2022|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}

Her work on Yolngu Aboriginal Australians understandings of the world, their use of technology, and their knowledge systems ranges from the 1990s to current engagement. Together with Michael Christie she has theorised digital knowledge technologies.

Starting with work on alternative modes of knowing nature management through fire,{{cite journal|last=Verran|first=Helen|year=2002|title=A Postcolonial Moment in Science Studies: Alternative Firing Regimes of Environmental Scientists and Aboriginal Landowners|journal=Social Studies of Science|volume=32|pages=729–762|doi=10.1177/030631270203200506|s2cid=145533382 }} Verran's recent work contributed to social studies of ecosystem services.e.g. {{cite journal|last=Verran|first=Helen|year=2012|title=The changing lives of measures and values: from centre stage in the fading 'disciplinary' society to pervasive background instrument in the emergent 'control' society|journal=The Sociological Review|volume=59|issue=2_suppl|pages=60–72|doi=10.1111/j.1467-954X.2012.02059.x|s2cid=142678551 }}

• [http://www.findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/display/person13380#tab-publications List of publications]
• [https://unimelb.academia.edu/HelenVerran Downloads at academia.edu]
• [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Helen_Verran profile and Download at researchgate]

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Category:Australian sociologists

Category:Australian women sociologists

Category:Academic staff of Charles Darwin University

Category:Living people

Category:Historians of science

Category:Actor-network theory

Category:Australian philosophers of science

Category:University of New England (Australia) alumni

Category:Academic staff of Obafemi Awolowo University

Category:Academic staff of the University of Melbourne

Category:Australian expatriates in Nigeria

Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

Category:Science and technology studies scholars