2025 INES Best Paper Award

Our international and interdisciplinary prize committee selected the article "Technological Origins of Korean Semiconductor Industry,” written by Sangwoon Yoo and published in the Korean Journal for the History of Science, for this year's INES Best Paper Award. The candidate pool for this year’s prize comprised all papers published outside the Engineering Studies journal during 2024 and 2025. The committee also highly commends two articles: “Staging the Robot” by Giulia de Togni, and “Engineering under Oppressive Regimes” by Corrinne B. Shaw and Bruce Kloot. The full citations for the three articles are listed below.

Winner: Sangwoon Yoo, “Technological Origins of Korean Semiconductor Industry,” The Korean Journal for the History of Science 47, no. 2 (2025): 201–33. https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART003239569.

Special commendation:

• Giulia de Togni, “Staging the Robot: Performing Techno-Politics of Innovation for Care Robotics in Japan,” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 18, no. 2 (2024): 196–213, https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2023.2295144.
• Corrinne B. Shaw and Bruce Kloot, “Engineering under Oppressive Regimes: Exploring the Role of Engineers during Apartheid South Africa,” European Journal of Engineering Education 50, no. 3 (2025): 493–511, https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2024.2419399.

Sangwoon Yoo has written a fascinating account showing how Korea’s semiconductor industry rose to a dominating position over many decades. He has written about a combination of ingenuity fostered by extreme hardship during the Korean War in the early 1950s, temporary exodus from consequent devastation seeking education and employment opportunities, and purposeful investments and alliances that enabled huge companies like Samsung to grow and flourish. The review panel was particularly impressed by his meticulous research from original and archival sources. His argument is particularly pertinent for contemporary policymakers: the free movement of people and ideas fosters the evolution of new technologies to address challenges we all face today.

The review panel found Giulia de Togni’s first-person account of her interactions with researchers developing socially assistive robots (SARs) both refreshing and challenging. SAR technology aims to improve the care of elderly and disabled people. She has portrayed researchers who were trying to persuade their communities that SARs will be safe, reliable and will improve productivity in the care sectors of the economy of Japan and Britain. Yet, these same researchers were nervous when they allowed her to take control of their robots lest she accidentally damage their precious creations or expensive lab equipment. Their robots were neither reliable nor safe. She challenges the techno-scientific imaginaries that researchers promote to gain funding, and governments promote to persuade communities to accept both greater risks and problematic consequences in the name of national development.

Corrinne Shaw and Bruce Kloot impressed the review panel with a fascinating study of apartheid-era engineers and how they navigated the social tensions in South Africa at the time. Political isolation necessitated government investments in technologies to circumvent international sanctions, providing talented engineers with opportunities to develop “cutting edge” technologies. Some engineers just “sat through the middle of it”. Others found they could push the boundaries, bit by bit, and at least prepare for the more liberated society that emerged in 1994. This research challenges the political neutrality of engineering that necessarily serves powerful society interests providing necessary resources and finance.