4S Mission

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

Latest 4S News

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 | InterAcademy Partnership Competitive Grants

Published On: Oct 18, 2024

Deadline: Dec 2, 2024

The InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) invites proposals from IAP member academies and regional networks, for projects that would help advance IAP’s mission and strategic goals. Proposed projects should preferably be collaborative across member academies and regional networks. Priority will be given to project proposals that aim to establish or continue support for collaborations across disciplines (for example, collaborations across academies of science, medicine and engineering), especially ...

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.

Co-developing Materials in the Metamorphic Zone: Extending Bacteriocentricity

Tiago Moreira

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Engineered living materials (ELMs) are composite technologies that respond to environmental cues, and are able to remodel, self-organise and self-heal. Proposed as a fusion...

Theaters of Algorithmic Transparency and the Politics of Exemplarity

Loup Cellard

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This article shows how transparency practitioners seeking to enhance the understandability of French housing tax algorithms produced slow disclosures they claim to be “exemplary.”...

Training Future Comrades: Gender Pedagogy and Model Train Sets in the German Democratic Republic

Mario Bianchini

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This article investigates how model train sets became a medium for the marketing and development of East German technological utopianism, particularly in order to recruit...

Geological (Dis)orientations: Training Sites, Storytelling, and Fieldwork in the Chilean Andes

Martín Fonck

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This article explores place-based geological storytelling by examining the role of training sites in the geoscientific learning process. Based on ethnographic work conducted...

Translating Law and Code in Government: Algorithmic Decisions and Their Legal Effects in Canada

Mike Zajko

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This article analyzes the translation of law into computer code and the use of automated decision-making systems in government to make legal distinctions. Specifically,...

Engaging Science, Technology and Society

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

Caring for Scholarship in Transition

Published On: Apr 15 2024

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

This editorial briefly reflects on the idea of transition—a theme that cuts across energy systems, migration, and education, to name a few—and is likely familiar to many readers. In this issue, we focus on transition within...

Collaborative Ethnography and Matters of Care in Counterspaces

Published On: Apr 22 2024

Coleen Carrigan, Joyce Yen, Cara Margherio, Christine Grant, Claire Horner-Devine, Eve Riskin, Julie Ivy, Burren Peil

This paper offers a reflexive analysis of an interdisciplinary and cross-race collaboration to advance equity in engineering called LATTICE (Launching Academics on the Tenure-Track: an Intentional Community in Engineering). We...

Algorithms in the Margins: Organized Community Resistance to Port Automation in the Los Angeles Harbor Area

Published On: Apr 22 2024

Taylor M Cruz, Jaewoo Park, Emily Moore, Austin Chen, Andrea Gordillo

Public deliberations on artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) provoke strong interest in automation, or the perceived displacement of human labor due to general technological advances. Social science scholarship...

Maintenance and Its Knowledges: Functional Exploration, Biographical Supervision, and Behavioural Examination

Published On: Apr 22 2024

Jérôme Denis, Daniel Florentin, David Pontille

This introductory article to the thematic collection entitled “Maintenance and its Knowledges” makes a significant departure from breakdown-centred studies. It foregrounds the epistemic virtues of maintenance, a practice that...

4S Blog: Backchannels

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.

Bee smellscapes: olfactory relations in urban everyday ecologies

Ceall Quinn
Nov 11, 2024
In this post, Ceall Quinn describes multispecies smellwalking, a method for attuning to olfactory pollinator relations in urban ecologies.

Excremental Hauntings, or the Waste of Modern Bodies

Warwick Anderson
Nov 04, 2024
What does our growing obsession with shit and bodily leakage tell us about being modern, enlightened, and objective? Can we think without the dialectic of the sphincter, that alternation between containment and discharge, sovereignty and submission?

Border leakages: counting deaths in the Mediterranean

Bruno Magalhães
Oct 28, 2024
In this post, Bruno Magalhães elaborates the concept of "leakage" as a lens through which to examine the hidden costs of externalized border controls. The concept allows us to address that which both escapes and reshapes containment.

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.

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

CfP | Writing History of Science on the Global South

Nov 25, 2024
Marcos Cueto (Fiocruz, Brazil), Patricia Palma (U. Tarapacá, Chile), Thomás Haddad (U. São Paulo, Brazil) and Roberto Chauca (U. Sydney, Australia) are organizing a symposium titled “Writing History of Science on the Global South” for the upcoming 27th International Congress of History of Science and Technology which will take place at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, 29 June-5 July 2025. We welcome papers that address the role that people and ins...

Goethe University | 8 Doctoral Positions

Oct 04, 2024
The DFG research training group (RTG) „Fixing Futures“ will offer 8 doctoral researcher positions at Goethe University in Frankfurt, starting May 1, 2025. The mission of the RTG „Fixing Futures“ is to investigate ‘technologies of anticipation‘ – that is, socio-material orderings and temporal orientations that have the capacity to define entire domains of knowledge, forms of social organisation, or even societies as a whole. We have now published the info...

CfP Graduate Students | Pre-conference workshop

Oct 04, 2024
Lithium Extraction: Research Directions and Needs in Latin America, LASA conference at UC Santa Barbara, Center for Restorative Environmental Work. This pre-conference workshop brings together scholars from different disciplines to discuss research advances and needs regarding lithium extraction and climate justice in Latin America. The workshop will have two components- a virtual morning graduate student paper workshop and in-person afternoon roundtable discussions.