CT West Coast dispatch in ’06/07

by Eszter Hargittai on September 20, 2005

Next year we’ll be adding a time zone to CT representation. I will be a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. I am super excited about this opportunity. The Center got a grant from the Annenberg Foundation last year to add Communications to the fields represented among its fellows and I’m going as part of such a cohort.

There’s something amusing related to all this. Or I thought it was amusing until I shared it with a friend who didn’t think it funny at all. You be the judge. While I was lifehacking away a few weeks ago, Chris pointed me to Google Sets for various associations. I decided to see what Google Sets had to say about my academic affiliations. I typed in the names of my BA and PhD granting institutions plus Northwestern (the place of my current employment) and pressed Large Sets. The fourth school on the list was Stanford. When I did this I already knew that I was headed to the Center next year so I found this amusing. But perhaps you need to have a certain geek factor to get anything out of this exercise.:)

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Crooked Timber » » Dance-off
09.20.05 at 8:13 pm

{ 5 comments }

1

Dan Nexon 09.20.05 at 2:50 pm

I saw the announcement when it came over the CITASA listserv some time ago. Many congratulations! For those who don’t get the significance, Eszter’s name is being added to the roles of one of the most distinguished group of scholars in the social sciences and humanities.

As for google shares, inputting my affiliations confirmed what I already knew about my network position in the American academy. :-)

2

Laura 09.20.05 at 7:06 pm

Eszter, congratulations!!

3

Matt 09.20.05 at 8:11 pm

First- congratulations! As a Peninsula native now living in China, please enjoy the warm climate and fresh food for me.

4

John Quiggin 09.21.05 at 1:37 am

Congratulations, Eszter!

5

melissa spore 09.22.05 at 1:38 am

Wait a second. I just tried the same thing with Google Set, putting in 3 institutions where I’ve studied and 2 where I’ve worked. Two of the five were Canadian, and all results were Canadian. I swapped my lesser-known undergraduate college (Marlboro) for University of Virginia, where I spent a summer. Same Canadian results. I deleted 1 Canadian institution (York) and left the better known one (U of Toronto) & listed 4 US schools;finally I got North American results.

No matter how I played around, if two entries were Canadian, all results were Canadian. Google Set believes my academic career is more associated with Redeemer College (Bible, in British Columbia) than anything in the US (despite punching in Columbia, CCNY, UVa, Marlboro and BU in various arrangements).

Is Google Set telling me that once an academic crosses the border there’s no going back?

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