4S Mission

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

Latest 4S News

Call for Assistant Editors for 4S Backchannels (Global South)

Published On: Nov 27, 2025

Deadline: Dec 15, 2025

The Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) is looking for STS graduate students, postdocs or early career scholars from/based in the Global South (especially Africa, Middle East, Asia) who can contribute as Assistant Editors for 4S Backchannels.
The candidate will be part of the team sharing and disseminating STS news, research from/about Global South in the form of short academic writings. Besides some editorial skills, they will encourage potential authors to contribute with their w...

CfP | Examining the State of STS in Southeast Asia: A (Technological) Snapshot

Published On: Oct 18, 2025

Deadline: Dec 31, 2025

The editors of East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (EASTS), together with guest editors Tobias Burgers and Ian Kalman, invite submissions for an upcoming special issue. We welcome manuscripts that engage with the theme of the special issue. The abstract outlining its scope is included below. Scholars with relevant work are encouraged to submit full manuscripts directly through the EASTS submission system: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/teas20
When submit...

BOOK REVIEW: 'Feminism in the Wild: How Human Biases Shape our Understanding of Animal Behavior' by Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer, 2025 (MIT Press)

Published On: Nov 24, 2025

Behavioral ecologist and feminist science studies scholar unite to offer paradigm shifting possibilities in an endlessly teachable new book: Feminism in the Wild.

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.

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...

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 &...

The Park Multiple: Practices of Coordination in a Conservation–Tourism Partnership in South Africa

Wisse Van Engelen, Annet Pauwelussen, Esther Turnhout

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Conservation–tourism partnerships are often promoted as win–win solutions to the twin problems of underfunded conservation and unsustainable development. Critics on...

“Bogeymen,” “Murderers,” and “Loonies”: Emotions in Dutch Debates on 5G and Health

Floortje Moes, Christian Bröer, Klasien Horstman

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Scientific advice is often solicited in governance, yet it is increasingly challenged in the public domain. Public participation is often suggested to mediate opposing...

Engaging Science, Technology and Society

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

Situating Microbes

Published On: Jul 13 2025

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

Issue 11.1 includes the thematic collection “Situating Microbes.” The collected essays on microbe studies in STS aims to situates microbes in complex ecologies beyond their pathogenic formations. All the articles in this issue...

Situating Microbes Within Complex Ecologies

Published On: Jul 25 2025

Jose A. Cañada, Salla Sariola, Matthäus Rest

The role of microbes in society has traditionally foregrounded their pathogenic character. However, this framing is being increasingly problematised as new research has shown the complex and nuanced role they have, not only in...

Development Histories, AMR Futures, and the Biosociality of a ‘Hotspot'

Published On: Jul 31 2025

Andrea Butcher

Paul Rabinow identified ‘practices of life’ as a potent site of twenty-first-century knowledge and power, arguing that instruments of genomic characterisation will reshape contemporary social relations, thus establishing a...

Racism and Vibrio cholerae: A Sociogenic Approach to Understanding Pathogenicity

Victoria Koski-Karell

After its pandemic debut in 1817, cholera became the most feared disease of the nineteenth century. Its source, a toxigenic bacterium: Vibrio cholerae. There is little coincidence that the prolific and far-reaching spread of this...

4S Blog: Backchannels

BOOK REVIEW: 'Feminism in the Wild: How Human Biases Shape our Understanding of Animal Behavior' by Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer, 2025 (MIT Press)

Amelia Carter studies the History and Sociology of Science in West Philadelphia, PA on Lenni-Lenape land. Holding a BA from SUNY Purchase and MS in Environmental Humanities from the University of Utah, they have previously worked on fugitive field guides to Rochester, NY; Salt Lake City, UT; and the Meat Rack, of Fire Island National Seashore fame. She is currently writing about lesbian dinosaurs, the queer arts of reptile reproduction at the American Museum of Natural History, and the strange uses of paleontological knowledge in 20th century race and sex science.
Nov 24, 2025
Behavioral ecologist and feminist science studies scholar unite to offer paradigm shifting possibilities in an endlessly teachable new book: Feminism in the Wild.

The richness of STS scholarship in Brazil: takes on the 11th ESOCITE.BR Symposium

Maria Cortez Salviano
Nov 20, 2025
The climate emergency took the main stage at the 11th edition of the Brazilian Association for the Social Studies of Science and Technology (ESOCITE.BR), organized shortly before COP30 in Belém

My journey through the cell in search of possible paths to becoming a feminist scientist: the “Feminista In Vitro” podcast

Fernanda Mariath
Nov 03, 2025
In Feminista In Vitro, Fernanda Mariath explores how feminist perspectives can reshape biomedical science—bridging cells, stories, and the social dimensions of research. Drawing on her laboratory experience and her journey as an early-career feminist STS researcher in Brazil, she reflects on how science can be reimagined through a feminist lens. Her research inspired a podcast of the same name, featuring interviews with STS feminist scholars from Brazil and other parts of the world.

Rethinking Science, Technology, and Care in the Age of Multiple Disasters: Report from the KASTS 2024 International Conference

Youjung Shin & So Yeon Leem, Korean Association of Science and Technology Studies (KASTS)
Oct 22, 2025
In the midst of a national crisis, when the president declared martial law, the Korean Association of Science and Technology Studies (KASTS) was hosting its annual STS conference on disasters and care.

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.

CfP | Irrationality and the Age of AI: Language, Ethics, and the Future of Human Expression

Oct 18, 2025
As part of the Desirable AI programme – a collaboration between Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and the University of Cambridge – this interdisciplinary conference, will explore the profound implications of large language models (LLMs), affective computing, and emotionally responsive AI. As machines venture into realms once thought uniquely human – emotion, creativity, irrationality – we ask: What does this mean for language, ethics, and the future of ...

Call for Assistant Editors for 4S Backchannels (Global South)

Nov 27, 2025
The Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) is looking for STS graduate students, postdocs or early career scholars from/based in the Global South (especially Africa, Middle East, Asia) who can contribute as Assistant Editors for 4S Backchannels.
The candidate will be part of the team sharing and disseminating STS news, research from/about Global South in the form of short academic writings. Besides some editorial skills, they will encourage potential authors to contribute with their w...

CfP | Footprint 40: Conditions of Architecture

Oct 18, 2025
Footprint, the open access Delft Architecture Theory Journal, is now welcoming abstracts on Conditions of Architecture. Footprint 40 (edited by Alina Paias and Catherine Koekoek) explores the theoretical and practical implications of situating architecture within its conditions of production. Architects are used to seeing themselves as the ones who set conditions, as the designers of spatial constraints within which certain activities will develop. Issue 40 of Footprint will explore what happens...

University of Cincinnati | Assistant Professor, Blue Humanities

Oct 18, 2025
The College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Cincinnati invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor in the Blue Humanities. This position is open to scholars who specialize in human-water interactions and who would contribute to broader conversations about the shifting roles of water in the era of climate change. Scholars trained in cultural and literary studies, ecocriticism, history, and/or environmental humanities who can address the materiality of water and have a...