4S Mission

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

Latest 4S News

Will the bubble burst? Thinking together about hype machines in the contemporary technoscience.

Published On: Apr 21, 2025

Ola Michalec Ph.D. considers the collective excitement surrounding AI and the ways in which the 'hype machine' mobilises resources, enrols new actors, creates pressure to accelerate responses, clouds judgement, conceals power dynamics or detracts from crucial infrastructural work. How might we situate the buzz and buzzwords AI as integral to the hype machine of promotion, exaggerated claims, collective frenzy, leadership and strong emotional responses influencing economic trends, political agend...

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 | Special Issues in Science, Technology, & Human Values

Published On: Apr 13, 2025

Deadline: Jun 21, 2025

The editorial group of Science, Technology, & Human Values is happy to announce the journal’s annual Call for Proposals for Special Issues. Since 1972, Science, Technology, & Human Values has provided a forum for cutting-edge research and debate in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). This is a collectively edited, peer-reviewed, transnational, interdisciplinary journal containing research, analyses and commentary on the development and dynamics of science and techn...

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.

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....

Machine's Eye View: Postmodern Data Science and the Politics of Ground Truth

Jathan SadowskiEmerging Technologies Research Lab, Faculty of Information Technology, 2541Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This paper advances the critical analysis of machine learning by placing it in direct relation with actuarial science as a way to further draw out their shared epistemic...

Agriculture by Algorithm: Big Data, Digitalization, and Biotechnology Under Climate Change

Yıldı‌z Atasoy1Department of Sociology and Anthropology, 1763Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Based on textual analysis of publicly available documents published by the Food and Agriculture Organization, Bayer, and its partner delivery start-ups, this paper provides...

Making the Global Local: The Case of Chinese Research and Innovation Evaluation Systems

Julia Kirch Kirkegaard, Alan Irwin, Xuan Li

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Starting with China's increasingly prominent role in the global politics of science, this paper considers the case of Chinese policies for the evaluation of Research &...

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

Will the bubble burst? Thinking together about hype machines in the contemporary technoscience.

Ola Michalec (Bristol Digital Futures Institute, UK)
Apr 21, 2025
Ola Michalec Ph.D. considers the collective excitement surrounding AI and the ways in which the 'hype machine' mobilises resources, enrols new actors, creates pressure to accelerate responses, clouds judgement, conceals power dynamics or detracts from crucial infrastructural work. How might we situate the buzz and buzzwords AI as integral to the hype machine of promotion, exaggerated claims, collective frenzy, leadership and strong emotional responses influencing economic trends, political agend...

The Heartware approach: how cultural values drive sustainable socio-technical change

Zeeda Fatimah Mohamad
Apr 07, 2025
Zeeda F. Mohamad explores the “Heartware approach” in sustainability science: a visualisation tool to enable community-based participation that emphasizes the integration of cultural values into environmental sustainability governance frameworks.

Interspecies Agencies: Controversies, Ontologies, and New Forms of Cohabitation (Part 3)

Gonzalo Correa and Arthur Arruda Leal Ferreira
Apr 01, 2025
This report on an EASST/4S 2024 panel is the third in a three-part series about interspecies agencies. Part Three rethinks STS through the lens of multispecies relations.

Interspecies Agencies: Controversies, Ontologies, and New Forms of Cohabitation (Part 2)

Arthur Arruda Leal Ferreira and Gonzalo Correa
Mar 24, 2025
This report on an EASST/4S 2024 panel is the second in a three-part series about interspecies agencies. Part Two highlights methodologies for studying multispecies relationships.

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.

Harvard | Berkman Klein Fellowship

Apr 13, 2025
The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University welcomes 2025-2026 fellowships applications. Fellows will reside in Cambridge, MA, to conduct independent work in collaboration with BKC faculty, staff, students, and the broader BKC community. Through this call, the Center will accept candidates across three tracks: Academic fellowships for full-time faculty members; Post-doc fellowships for scholars who have recently completed their PhDs or equivalent; Non-academic fello...

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

Nov 11, 2024
‘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...

York U | Postdoctoral Visitor in Metadata & Research Evaluation

Apr 10, 2025
The Postdoctoral Visitor (PDV) will work on an international project for two-and-half years. The project title is “Between Economy and Democracy: Reorganizing Research Evaluation through Metadata in the Digital Era” and is funded by the Open Research Area 8 initiative through SSHRC (Canada), ESRC (UK), ANR (France), and DFG (Germany). The PDV will be working directly for Prof Birch on the Canadian part of the project but will also work with the other project partners. This project is...

CFP | Impact: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning

Apr 08, 2025
The editors of Impact: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning are pleased to announce an open call for articles for a forthcoming issue. Impact is a peer-reviewed biannual online journal devoted to interdisciplinary teaching, learning, and scholarship. The editors especially value pieces that demonstrate the need for interdisciplinary solutions to twenty-first-century problems. Articles of interest will engage the advantages, challenges, and modes of interdiscipl...