4S Mission

Fostering interdisciplinary and engaged scholarship in social studies of science, technology, and medicine across the globe.

Latest 4S News

Editor(s), Open-Access Journal Engaging Science, Technology, and Society

Published On: Jan 17, 2025

Deadline: Mar 31, 2025

The Publications Committee of the Society for Social Studies of Science solicits nominations and proposals for Editor(s) to lead the 4S-sponsored diamond open access journal, Engaging Science, Technology, and Society. ESTS is a vibrant peer-reviewed venue for addressing how science and technology infuse the world in which we live.
The journal publishes peer-reviewed content in both long-form and short-form genres: original research articles, thematic collections, engagements, perspectives, an...

CfP | Science as Culture Special Issue: Colonial Relations in Modern Techno-Securitisation

Published On: Nov 11, 2024

Deadline: Apr 30, 2025

‘Security’ has become an increasingly dominant frame in recent decades, linking issues such as climate, biodiversity, borders, energy, food and military activities. Ever-more societal issues have been framed as security problems, even as existential threats. These frames seek to justify pre-emptive management through technoscientific expert systems, imagining control over everything and fostering an authoritarian culture. This SaC special issue will explore linkages among three dynam...

CfP | Medical and Health Humanities: Global Perspectives 2025

Published On: Oct 4, 2024

Deadline: Dec 15, 2024

The 3rd international conference on Medical and Health Humanities: Global Perspectives 2025 in Doha, Qatar on February 7-8, 2025 invites abstracts for oral presentations and posters on the topics of: narrative medicine, medical sociology, philosophy of medicine, medical ethics and narrative ethics, literature and medicine, arts therapies and arts-in-health, healthcare communication, the history of medicine and other humanistic initiatives in health and medicine.
Abstract Submission Deadline: ...

4S Publications

Science, Technology, and Human Values

For more than forty years, Science, Technology, & Human Values has provided the forum for cutting-edge research and debate in the field of science and technology studies.

From Obsolescence to Abandonment: Exploring the Precarious Use of Cochlear Implants in India

Michele FriednerAuthor Biography Michele Friedner is an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago.

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Cochlear implants are considered the gold standard in intervening on deafness and hearing loss. However, “success” is predicated upon routine and consistent use, which...

Bearly Recognizable: Facial Recognition and the Wild

Emily WandererDepartment of Anthropology, 6614University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
While big tech companies are growing more circumspect about the use of facial recognition for humans, interest in nonhuman facial recognition is surging. The identification...

Between Code and Culture: The Evolving Role of Conversation Designers and UX in AI Development

Elizabeth Rodwell1Department of Information Science Technology, 14743University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Artificial intelligence (AI)-related technologies available to consumers have been rapidly advancing but without parallel insight into the social process of their design....

“Kids are Kids”: Benevolent Ignorance and the Omission of Race in Developmental Justice Reform

William Wannyn1Institute for Society and Genetics, 8783University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
The criminal culpability of juvenile offenders remains a controversial and contested issue in the legal and public arenas in the United States. Since the mid-2000s, juvenile...

Citizen Observations as Legal Obligations: (Dis)Associations and Representation at the Swedish Land and Environment Court of Appeal

Dick Kasperowski, Jesse Peterson, Niclas Hagen

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
There is an increasing international trend in environmental activism to use legal institutions and infrastructures for citizen science (CS) to affect policy and regulation....

Engaging Science, Technology and Society

Engaging Science, Technology, & Society is an online, open access publication of The Society for Social Studies of Science.

Transitioning ESTS

Published On: Mar 7 2025

Grant Otsuki, Clément Dréano, Noela Invernizzi, Ali Kenner, Angela Okune, Duygu Kaşdoğan, Sujatha Raman, Tim Schütz, Federico Vasen, Amanda Windle, Emily York

Contributions to this issue focus on a wide range of domains and problematics—environment, extractivism, air pollution, climate change, digitalization, automation, care, surveillance—that offer a thought-provoking commentary...

Volatile Atmosphere: A Tkaronto Archive

Published On: Mar 10 2025

Sophia Jaworski

This article delves into the history of petrochemical-derived gas emissions in Toronto, focusing on their emergence and regulation from the end of World War II and up to 1980. Drawing on archival materials, I trace local knowledge...

‘Origin Stories of the ‘Grants Uranium District’ in Northwestern New Mexico: Archives, Memoirs, and Exploratory Boreholes in the Production of Geological Regions

Published On: Mar 7 2025

Thomas De Pree

The “Grants uranium district” of northwestern New Mexico yielded more uranium ore than any other mining district in the United States during the Cold War Period (1947-1989). After the national market for uranium collapsed...

Farmers’ Creativity and Cultivated Senses: The Immediacy of Embodied Knowledge in Alternative Agriculture

Published On: Mar 7 2025

Dimas Dwi Laksmana

The Indonesian government has promoted several forms of alternative agriculture in response to the productivity orientation and top-down bureaucratic institutions in intensive agriculture. Implemented in the late 1980s, the Integrated...

4S Blog: Backchannels

Interspecies Agencies: Controversies, Ontologies, and New Forms of Cohabitation (Part 1)

Gonzalo Correa and Arthur Arruda Leal Ferreira
Mar 17, 2025
This report on an EASST/4S 2024 panel introduces a three-part series about interspecies agencies, highlighting territorial conflicts first.

Understanding Misinformation. International Symposium, 9 December 2024

Kim M. Hajek, Paul Trauttmansdorff, Sabina Leonelli
Mar 03, 2025
In this post, Kim M. Hajek, Paul Trauttmansdorff, Sabina Leonelli report on the “Understanding Misinformation” international symposium held on December 9th, 2024, at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Caring about Psychedelic Science: An Alternative Approach to Studying Hype

Kai River Blevins
Mar 01, 2025
Kai River Blevins argues for the development of a critical phenomenology of care to better understand hype around psychedelic science

Re-networking digital infrastructure: a Non-Aligned Tech Movement to take us beyond the age of informational capitalism

Juan Ortiz Freuler
Feb 24, 2025
In this post, Juan Ortiz Freuler presents a need for a wide collective structure beyond central players to reclaim digital sovereignty for nations in the Global Majority

Backchannels content is contributed by our members to highlight news relevant to their work.

STS News

Items submitted by the community and emailed to members monthly.

Editor(s), Open-Access Journal Engaging Science, Technology, and Society

Jan 17, 2025
The Publications Committee of the Society for Social Studies of Science solicits nominations and proposals for Editor(s) to lead the 4S-sponsored diamond open access journal, Engaging Science, Technology, and Society. ESTS is a vibrant peer-reviewed venue for addressing how science and technology infuse the world in which we live.
The journal publishes peer-reviewed content in both long-form and short-form genres: original research articles, thematic collections, engagements, perspectives, an...

Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis

Mar 17, 2025
“Systemic Risks of Artificial Intelligence” invites qualified experts to apply for two open tenders on the systemic risks of artificial intelligence (AI): 1) Systemic environmental risks of AI: Development and roll-out of AI have accelerated dramatically in recent years and show no signs of slowing down. Simultaneously, AI consumes vast amounts of resources and may have complex secondary effects that pose systemic risks to the environment. We call on experts to assess causes, pathway...

Online course | Conscious and Inclusive Language in Academic Contexts

Mar 17, 2025
Drs. Thoko Kamwendo and D. Scott have created an online course on using conscious and inclusive language in academic teaching and writing. The course consists of 15 lessons, with accompanying transcripts, exercises, and links to relevant resources, as well as an extensive annotated list of resources, organized by issue. Participants go through the course at their own speed and have access to Q&A Zoom calls with the course organizers several times a year. The course is particularly suitable f...

CfP | Murmurations in Avian Technoscience

Mar 03, 2025
Murmurations in Avian Technoscience; A Special Section of Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. In this special section, we invite birders, that is, those who notice avian relations, to explore how birds enter, become, confound, or mutate technology (expansively defined). We seek to engage in how the stuff of birds—their beaks, bones, and feathers—is datafied, mechanized, and digitized. We are also interested in constellations in flight that reflect on avian boundaries and break...