Grad Forum: Jesse Minor

Graduate Forum is an informal venue for SNR grads to present their work. The forum is open to graduate students.

Jesse Minor presents his research at Grad Forum:

Scientific Research across Socialist Transitions: Shifting Focus of Physical Science Research in Mongolia

Scientific research and analysis is often considered an objective and neutral strategy of knowledge production. As such, it is not clear how shifts in political and economic systems might affect the production and content of scientific work. Using content and discourse analyses, this paper examines a body of English-language physical science research conducted in Mongolia from 1982 through early 2008. Demographic features of scientific work, such as the type of journal and location of publication, the institutional affiliation of the authors, and their funding sources were correlated to changes in scientific method, scientific questions, and claims about the Mongolian environment. In addition, Russian-language publications were translated and compared to the English-language journal articles. The fall of the Soviet Union heralded stark shifts in certain demographic features such as journal choice, patterns of institutional affiliation, and funding sources, with features such as research methods remaining somewhat constant. A corresponding shift towards conservation-oriented research and qualitative claims about the Mongolian environment is also observed. This paper uses the case of Mongolian physical science research to explore how this post-socialist transition influences scientific demographics, questions, and methods, in the process examining and explaining the relationship between specific scientific claims and changing political and economic conditions.