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

Latest 4S News

‘Voicing Places’ at EASST/4S

Published On: Oct 14, 2024

This report generates new insights to the concept of 'voicing' through a summary of panel discussions held during the EASST/4S meeting in Amsterdam to ask: What politics becomes possible through diverse and distributed practices of voicing attuned to soundings, and how do these politics translate into STS knowledge work?

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 Annotated Book Series | Imagination

Published On: Oct 10, 2024

The editorial team behind the new series Imagination, Annotated, from the MIT Press, is inviting proposals for edited books in the series. Imagination, Annotated features speculative fiction texts from the 19th and 20th centuries that envisage possible futures, each annotated by a diverse group of experts, scholars, and practitioners. It aims to open up great works of speculative fiction to new readers and contemporary concerns, inspire reflection, and include readers in a continuing conversati...

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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.

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Small Chemicals of Trauma: Epigenetics as Colonial Unknowing

Henrietta Byrne

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
In Australia, some Indigenous and non-Indigenous scientists, health workers, psychologists, and others have identified a resonance between epigenetics and Indigenous scholarship...

Ethics and Practice in Communities of Care

Joan H. Fujimura

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
The Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) annually awards the John Desmond Bernal Prize to one or more individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the...

Infrastructuring Readability: Framing and Overflowing in Writing Assistant Software for Biomedical Research Informed Consent Forms

Loïc Riom

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This article analyzes the development process of a software solution designed to assist researchers in writing biomedical research–informed consent forms. Funded by a...

Of Bridges, Translations, and Practical Necessities

Sonja van Wichelen

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This essay is part of a Thematic Collection of Science, Technology & Human Values on the work of Adele E. Clarke (1945–2024).

Becoming Scientific-Environmental Citizens Through Citizen Science in China

Coraline Goron

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This article advocates for a closer study of the forms of citizenship nurtured among individual participants in citizen science (CS) projects by highlighting some salient...

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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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

‘Voicing Places’ at EASST/4S

Endre Dányi (University of the Bundeswehr Munich) and Michaela Spencer (Charles Darwin University), together with Helen Verran (Charles Darwin University) and Matt Campbell (University of Melbourne), Dženeta Hodžić (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main), Martina Klausner (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main), Caroline Anna Salling (Technical University of Denmark) and Brit Ross Winthereik (Technical University of Denmark)
Oct 14, 2024
This report generates new insights to the concept of 'voicing' through a summary of panel discussions held during the EASST/4S meeting in Amsterdam to ask: What politics becomes possible through diverse and distributed practices of voicing attuned to soundings, and how do these politics translate into STS knowledge work?

ST&HV Summer School 2024: Reflections on academic generosity and doing STS in Singapore

Lauren Kelly
Oct 03, 2024
Lauren Kelly reports back from the STS Summer School in Singapore in June 2024, sponsored by Science, Technology and Human Values

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.

Intervention and Responses: a critical historical period for Feminist Science Studies and STS. By Daiwie Fu. Taiwan: China Times Publishing, 2022, 208 pp.

Daiwie Fu
Sep 30, 2024
While today feminist science studies and STS are often considered inseparable, Daiwie Fu examines their once tumultuous relationship. In this post, he offers a brief review of the convergence between feminist studies and STS.

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.

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

Levi Symposium on The Value(s) of Disposability in Health Care

Oct 14, 2024
Roughly 80 percent of healthcare’s oversized carbon footprint derives from the production, transportation, use, and disposal of a single-use medical supply chain. Caregivers, patients, and health-system managers fear that any move from disposability to sustainability must lead to trade-offs in safety (from infectious threats), efficacy (in pharmaceutical delivery) or efficiency (in cost-effectiveness). This year’s Levi Symposium will question these perceived trade-offs, disentangling...

CfP Workshops and Interactive Sessions | iConference: Living in an AI-gorithmic world

Oct 04, 2024
The iConference is an annual gathering of a broad spectrum of scholars and researchers from around the world who share a common concern about critical information issues in contemporary society. The iConference pushes the boundaries of information studies, explores core concepts and ideas, and creates new technological and conceptual configurations—all situated in interdisciplinary discourses.
Submission deadline (workshops & interactive sessions): October 20, 2024 | Event: 18-22 M...

Call for Panels | STS Italia Conference

Oct 04, 2024
We are pleased to announce the Call for Panels for the upcoming 10th STS Italia Conference “Technoscience for Good: Designing, Caring and Reconfiguring” which will be held on 11-13 June, 2025, at the Politecnico di Milano in Milan, Italy. We welcome proposals for open panels, which will be opened to paper submissions during the general call for abstracts. Panel organizers are asked to submit only a title and a brief description of the panel’s topic.
Panels due: 21 October, 2...
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