Edward Hackett is the fist invited speaker to the PEERE conference in Rome, 7-9 March 2018. Edward is Senior Sustainability Fellow, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University and Professor, Department of Sociology, Brandeis University. He got a PhD in Sociology from Cornell in 1979. With Daryl E Chubin, he authored one of the most influential books on peer review “Peerless science: Peer review and US science policy” (1990, State University of New York). He is currently editor of Science, Technology & Human Values.