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

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4S Palestine Forum | Contributions Call

Published On: Jul 30, 2024

The 4S Palestine Forum, launched earlier this year as the initial project of the Working Group on War and Genocide that was initiated at 4S Honolulu in 2023, is welcoming further contributions.

Please submit new short blog-style entries, as well as references to published work, syllabi, and other resources by writing info@4sonline.org.

View the Palestine Forum in its entirety here: https://www.4sonline.org/palestine_forum.php

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: ...

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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.

Learn More About STHV ⪢

Psychedelic Nation? (De)Provincializing the Psychedelic Renaissance from Brazil

Pietro Benedito

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Research into the therapeutic potential of psychedelic substances has garnered spectacular international attention. Most of this focuses on research in the Global North....

Between Decay and Maintenance: Tuberculosis Sanatoriums, Care Infrastructures and U.S. Health Policy Debates, 1945–1972

Sydney Goggins

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
The development of streptomycin and isoniazid transformed the landscape of tuberculosis treatment in the United States in the mid-twentieth century. Sanatoriums continued...

Bearly Recognizable: Facial Recognition and the Wild

Emily Wanderer

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...

Ethics and Artificial Intelligence in the Interdisciplinary Collaborations of Smart Care

Christine Hine

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This article explores how the work of ethical assurance is understood by those involved in artificial intelligence development and deployment, and uses the findings to...

An Enquiry Into Modes of Non-Existence

Govert Valkenburg

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
After the many symmetries (subject-object, truth-falsity, etc.) that science and technology studies (STS) has explored, one symmetry seems unaddressed: the symmetry of...

Engaging Science, Technology and Society

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

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Standards, Pedagogies, and Celebrating the STS Infrastructure Award to ESTS

Published On: Dec 1 2024

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

Volume 10 comes in two parts, issue 1 and 2 published together. The double issue includes two Thematic Collections, “Standards and their Containers” and “Pedagogical Intersections.” It also includes two original research...

Tracing the Displacement of Data Work in AI: A Political Economy of “Human-in-the-Loop”

Published On: Dec 2 2024

Bidisha Chaudhuri, Srravya Chandhiramowuli

In this study, we trace the evolution of a data work team in an artificial intelligence (AI) startup in India. By bringing attention to data work, which is the indispensable work of preparing annotated datasets for training AI...

Renewable Ruse: Bioenergy Development in North Carolina’s Coastal Plains

Published On: Dec 1 2024

Dana Powell, Jefferson Currie, Danielle Koonce, Mac Legerton, Rebecca Witter

Rural communities in eastern North Carolina are responding to the emergence of bioenergy development as an extension of environmental injustices, rather than sustainable solutions to climate change as presented by state and industry...

Storying Monocrop Infrastructure: A Conversation on Governance, Scale, and Failure

Published On: Dec 2 2024

Sophie Chao, Kregg Hetherington

Plantations have recently become the focus of renewed empirical and conceptual inquiry across the social sciences, arts, and humanities. Scholarship in this interdisciplinary space calls on us to reckon with industrial monocultures’...

4S Blog: Backchannels

Possession as Ruse—A Conversation about Digital Dispossession

Nanna Bonde Thylstrup (Copenhagen University) and Fleur Johns
Dec 09, 2024
This conversation reveals how traditional frameworks of dispossession, while valuable, may not fully capture the complexities of exploitation in today's digital economy.

Reframing histories of vaccine development through non-human animal lenses

Alexis Bedolla Velázquez
Dec 02, 2024
In this post, Alexis Bedolla explores vaccine development in Mexico through non-human animal lenses, arguing for the transgression of epidemiological representations.

Zines as communication tools to engage the public in debates about technology

Jussara Rowland and Ana Delicado
Nov 25, 2024
Engaging the public in critical conversations about technology presents a key challenge for researchers in STS and related fields. Jussara Rowland and Ana Delicado argue that zines are a valuable, yet under-utilized, tool for achieving this goal.

Can science ensure “100% Halal”?

Arum Budiastuti
Oct 07, 2024
As part of her PhD project on the transformation of the concept halal in Indonesia, Arum Budiastuti offers a reflection on how technology-based halal certification introduces a new meaning of halal and what implications this has.

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

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Making and Doing: STS Beyond the Four Corners of the Paper

STS News

Items submitted by the community and emailed to members monthly.

CfP | Workshop and book 'Hostility by Design'

Nov 11, 2024
In recent years, perhaps stimulated by the growing awareness of the power of digital technologies, there have been calls for engineers and designers to advance values ‘by design’, such as democracy, participation, privacy and transparency. This builds on earlier inclusive design and access-for-all initiatives. But not all encounters with technologies are fulfilling, and some are designed to exclude or harm people, animals and nature. This workshop focuses on those technologies that c...

Pratt | Tenure-Track Position in Visual & Material Culture

Nov 25, 2024
The Department of Social Science & Cultural Studies at Pratt Institute invites applications for a full-time tenure-track faculty position at the Assistant Professor rank, with an area of focus in visual & material culture, to begin Fall 2025. We seek a dynamic scholar and educator whose research emphasizes visuality and/or materiality, and their social, political, economic, and cultural contexts. A PhD in a relevant social science discipline or interdisciplinary field is required at the ...

Fellowships at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg Cultures of Research

Dec 09, 2024
The Käte Hamburger Kolleg Cultures of Research (c:o/re) is an international center for advanced studies at RWTH Aachen University, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The center has openings for a total of ten international fellows from the humanities and social sciences, as well as from natural, life, and technical sciences. Cultures of Research is positioned where the fields of history, philosophy, and sociology interface with natural science and technology. W...

4S Palestine Forum | Contributions Call

Jul 30, 2024
The 4S Palestine Forum, launched earlier this year as the initial project of the Working Group on War and Genocide that was initiated at 4S Honolulu in 2023, is welcoming further contributions.

Please submit new short blog-style entries, as well as references to published work, syllabi, and other resources by writing info@4sonline.org.

View the Palestine Forum in its entirety here: https://www.4sonline.org/palestine_forum.php
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