Travel Awards for SIGCIS Meetings

SIGCIS offers an integrated program of travel awards to broaden the base of participants in its annual workshops. Maximizing our support here is the top financial priority for the SIG, and a highly cost effective investment in the future of our field.

SIGCIS Travel Award Programs

Our awards are named in recognition of their various sponsors, but the eligibility criteria and application process is the same for all of them.

We have three ongoing awards programs:

  • Computer History Museum Travel Awards. Funded annually from 2014 through 2018 with a donation from the Computer History Museum Chair, Len Shustek. Previously funded (2010-2013) with support from Richard S. Tedlow, the Class of 1949 Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at the Harvard Business School.
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Awards. These are made using proceeds from our annual auction of donated books donated by SIGCIS members, cash donations at the annual meeting, and income from the capital in the Mahoney Fund. Mahoney was the auctioneer at our first event, and encouraged the work of many graduate students in our field.
  • MIT Press Travel Awards. MIT is a major sponsor of the SIGCIS auction, donating a range of books each year. Income from these books is used to fund the MIT Press awards.

Travel Support for Presenters at SIGCIS Meetings

Applications are encouraged from all graduate students, unemployed scholars or temporary employees without access to institutional travel support seekign to present a paper or otherwise participate in the program of the annual SIGCIS Workshop. In April 2010 the SHOT executive council clarified that participants in the SIGCIS workshop are not considered as participants in the SHOT conference program and so are not eligible for SHOT's own financial support.

To request consideration for funding simply check the appropriate box when submitting your proposal online for the workshop. We may contact you later to request additional information, including an estimate of how much money you will be receiving from other sources. SIGCIS awards will not exceed $500 and will usually be lower so should not be relied upon to cover the full cost of attending.

Travel Support for Presenters in the Main SHOT Conference

We are prioritizing our funds for those presenting only at the SIGCIS workshop, as SHOT has its own funds for those presenting in the main conference. If you are presenting in the main conference but not the workshop then we are unlikely to be able to make an award. This applies even if the session is sponsored by SIGCIS. For those presenting in the main conference and the workshop we will make awards when funds permit. The main SHOT program for graduate student travel grants is explained at http://www.historyoftechnology.org/awards/travelgrants.html and has a complex application form. Note that you must be a SHOT member to apply for a SHOT travel grant.

Award Recipients To Date

2018: Stored in Memory: The 10th Annual SIGCIS Conference at SHOT in St. Louis.

  • Computer History Museum Travel Award: Whitney Pow, Northwestern University, for "Documented, Documenting: Unearthing Transgender Subjectivity in the Computer Operating System"
  • Computer History Museum Travel Award: Alana Staiti, Cornell University, for "The Material Cultures of Digitization: Lights, Cameras, Stone, Plastic, and Other Unexpected Treasures in Rapid, Non-contact Laser Scanning Research, 1977-1994"
  • Computer History Museum Travel Award: Alberto Jorge Silva de Lima, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, for "Constructed Memories, Promises of Autonomy and the Histories of the National Informatics Policy (70s and 90s) and the Free Software Fostering Policy (2003-2016) in Brazil"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Elisabetta Mori, Middlesex University, for "From Academia to Business: The Case of EDSAC and LEO"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Jeffrey Moro, University of Maryland, College Park, for "Want of Water, Want of Data: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database and Oceanic Computing"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Marc Aidinoff, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for "Jefferson's Ghost: Accessing the Internet's Haunted Memory"
  • MIT Press Travel Award: Will Lockett, New York University, for "Archeology of the Toposcope"
  • MIT Press Travel Award: Emma Catherine Perry, University of Georgia, for "Initial Reference, Attribution and Institutional Memory in the Age of ARPANET"

2017: Measure, Model, Mix: Computer as Instrument. 2017 SIGCIS Conference at SHOT in Philadelphia

  • Computer History Museum Travel Award: Elizabeth Petrick, New Jersey Institute of Technology, to present "Curb Cuts and Computers: Arguing for Accessibility in the 1980s"
  • Computer History Museum Travel Award: Quinn DuPont, University of Washington & Alana Cattapan, University of Saskatchewan, to present "Alice and Bob: A History of Cryptography’s Most Famous Couple"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Kate Sim, Oxford Internet Institute, to present "Touching Safety: Anti-Rape Technologies and the Politics of Safety in US Higher Education"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Andrew Lea, University of Oxford, to present "“The Total Patient”: Keeve Brodman and the Medical Data Screen"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: William Lockett, New York University, to present "Race in the Cybernetic Fold"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Evangelos Kotsioris, Princeton University, to present "Automating Soviet Design: The Case of ASPOS"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Gili Vidan, Harvard University, to present "‘Nothing in the Middle’: Escrowed Encryption, Crypto Anarchy, and the Colonization of the Future, 1988-2001"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Jillian Foley, University of Chicago, to present "Encryption for Everyone?"
  • MIT Press Travel Award: Nabeel Siddiqui, College of William and Mary, to present "Creative Inequality: Seymour Papert and the Thinking Machine" (with Morgan Ames, University of California at Berkeley)
  • MIT Press Travel Award: Kera Allen, Georgia Institute of Technology, to present "The Politics of Spreadsheets: Bringing VisiCalc to Tunisia"

2016: SIGCIS Workshop on Convergence and Divergence in Singapore

  • Computer History Museum Travel Award: Loïc Petitgirard, Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, $500 to present "When Physicists Meet Microprocessors: Professional Scientific Hackers at the Dawn of the Micro Era in France"
  • Computer History Museum Travel Award: Quinn DuPont, University of Toronto, $500, for "Cybersecurity: Genealogies and Practices"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Alana Staiti, Cornell University, $500 to present "A Body in Motion: A History of Human Modeling for Computer Graphics and Animation, 1960s-1980s"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Niranjan Sivakumar, Sciences Po Medialab, $500 to present "Opening the CryptoDB Vault to Map Convergence and Divergence in Cryptologic Research"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Sandeep Mertia, The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, $500 to present "From Computing Clerks to Androids – A Tentative Archaeology of ‘Data’ in India"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Fabian Prieto-Nanez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, $500 to present "Assembling peripherics. Networks of exchange and Colombian technoculture in the 1980s"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Morten Bay, UCLA, $500 to present "Political and Sociocultural Formation of Cybersecurity Policy in the US, EU, and China"
  • MIT Press Travel Award: Luke Stark, New York University, $500 to present "Feeling Machines & Model Humans: The Genesis of Emotional Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), 1975-1985"

2015: SIGCIS Workshop on Infrastructures in Albuquerque, New Mexico

  • Computer History Museum Travel Award: Camille Paloque-Berges, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, $500 to present "Unix networks cooperation as a shadow infrastructure for an early French Internet experience (1983-1993)"
  • Computer History Museum Travel Award: Jacob Ward, University College London, $500 to present "Research Transplanted and Privatised: Post Office/British Telecom R&D in the Digital and Information Era"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Eileen Clancy, City University of New York, $300 to present "Abacus Computing in the Age of Electronics: Sekiko Yoshida and the Early U.S. Space Program"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Gerardo Con Diaz, Yale University, $200 to present "IBM and Patent Reform in the United States, 1965-1968"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Quinn Dupont, University of Toronto, $200 to present "Plaintext, Encryption, Ciphertext: A History of Cryptography and its Influence on Contemporary Society"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Devin Kennedy, Harvard University, $300 to present "What was "Real" about "Real-Time"?: Time and Responsiveness in Early Post-War Computing"
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Brent Strang, Stony Brook University, $200 to present "Peripheral Convergence Through User-Centered Design: A Case-Study of Logitech"
  • MIT Press Travel Award: Bradley Fidler, UCLA, $200 to present "The Emergence of Border Router Protocols and Autonomous Systems on the Internet, c. 1968-1989"
  • MIT Press Travel Award: Reem Hilu, Northwestern University, $300 to present “'The Ultimate Doll': Microprocessor Controlled Talking Dolls and Girls’ Play Practices in the Home"
  • MIT Press Travel Award: Andrew Schrock, University of Southern California, $200 to present "From Black Hats to White Hats: Constructing the 'Ethical Hacker'"

2014: SIGCIS Workshop on Computing the Big Picture: Situating Information Technology in Broader Historical Narratives in Dearborn, Michigan

  • Computer History Museum Travel Award: Michael McGovern of the University of Cambridge, $400 to present "Re-framing Power Relations in the Historiography of Computing: Examples from Early Medical Genetics and Calculator User Groups."
  • Computer History Museum Travel Award: Ekaterina Babintseva of the University of Pennsylvania, $400 to present "Between Life and Mechanism: The Notion of Information in Warren McCulloch's Theory."
  • Computer History Museum Travel Award: Gerardo Con Diaz of Yale University, $250 to present "Embodied Software: Patents and Software Development, 1946-1970."
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Andrew Gansky of the University of Texas, Austin, $400 to present "The Meaning of Life in the Automated Office."
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Jonathan Scott Clemens, $250 to present "'The Most Blatant Testimony We Have to American Waste:' Moral Panic and Video Arcade Games, 1978-1983."
  • MIT Press Travel Award: Beatrice Choi of Northwestern University, $250 to present "Ser Técnico: Localized Technology Transfer, Emerging Technical Actors, and the Brazilian Computer Industry."
  • MIT Press Travel Award: William Vogel of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, $250 to present "Shifting Attitudes: Women in Computing, 1965-1985."
  • MIT Press Travel Award: Katherine McFadden of the University of South Carolina, $250 to present "Hand Sewn Computing: Women’s Hobbies, Needlework and Computer Electronics."
  • UW-Milwaukee School of Information Studies Travel Award: Alex Campolo of New York University, $250 to present "White Collar Foragers: Ecology, Economics, and Logics of Information Visualization."
  • UW-Milwaukee School of Information Studies Travel Award: Fabian Prieto-Nanez of the University of Illinois at Urbana--Champaign, $250 to present "Assembling Peripherals. Emerging cultures of Computing in Colombia in the 80s."

2013: SIGCIS Workshop on Old Ideas: Recomputing the History of Information Technology in Portland, Maine

2012: SIGCIS Workshop on Information Identities: Historical Perspectives on Technological and Social Change in Copenhagen, Denmark

2011: SIGCIS Workshop on Cultures & Communities in the History of Computing in Cleveland, Ohio

2010: SIGCIS Workshop on Materiality & Immateriality in the History of Computing in Tacoma, Washington

  • Computer History Museum Travel Award: Mai Sugimoto, Kyoto University, $500 to present “Making Computers Logical: Edmund Berkeley’s Promotion of Logical Machines.”
  • Computer History Museum Travel Award: Dave Goodwin, Birkbeck College London, $500 to present a dissertation in progress on “Digital Equipment's Rise and Fall, Could it Have Been Avoided?”
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Ksenia Tatarchenko, Princeton University, $300 to present a dissertation in progress on “The Akademgorodok Computing Center (1958-1990).”
  • MIT Press Travel Award:Petrina Foti, Smithsonian NMAH, $300 to present “Museums and the Material Culture of Video Games."
  • MIT Press Travel Award: Marie Hicks, Duke University, $300 to present "'The World Looks to Britain': Technology Transfer, Heterogeneous Engineering, and British Computing Companies’ Attempt to Capture the Indian Market, 1955-1965."
  • UW-Milwaukee School of Information Studies Information History Travel Award: Hansen Hsu, Cornell University, $300 to present a dissertation in progress on “A History and Ethnography of the Cocoa Software Community.”
  • UW-Milwaukee School of Information Studies Information History Travel Award: Olga Pantelidou, National Technical University of Athens, $200 to chair a session on "Teaching & Showing" and also present in the main SHOT meeting.

2009 SIGCIS Workshop on Mike Mahoney and the Histories of Computing in Pittsburgh:

  • MIT Press Travel Award: Stephen Patnode, Temple University, $200 to present "The Impact of Computers on Corporate Paternalism in the Post-war United States" in the Political Institutions session of the SIGCIS Workshop.
  • MIT Press Travel Award: Hansen Hsu, Cornell University, $200 to present “Connections between the Software Crisis and Object-Oriented Programming” in the SIGCIS workshop.
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Evan Koblentz, InfoAge Science Center, $200 to present "The Pre-History of Portable Computers" in the SIGCIS organized SHOT session "Paths Not Taken and Paths Retraced in the History of Technology.
  • Michael S. Mahoney Travel Award: Chris McDonald, Princeton University, $200 to present "From Computer Utility to Time-Sharing: Politics and Technology in the 1960s American Computer Industry" in the SIGCIS organized SHOT session "Paths Not Taken and Paths Retraced in the History of Technology.

2008: SHOT Annual Meeting in Washington, DC

  • MIT Press Travel Award: Honghong Tinn, Cornell University, $400 to present "Tinkering with Overseas-Shipped Mainframe Computers in Cold War Taiwan, 1945-1965".