4S Mission
Fostering interdisciplinary and engaged scholarship in social studies of science, technology, and medicine across the globe.
Latest 4S News
Editor(s), Open-Access Journal Engaging Science, Technology, and Society
Published On: Jan 17, 2025
Deadline: Mar 31, 2025
The Publications Committee of the Society for Social Studies of Science solicits nominations and proposals for Editor(s) to lead the 4S-sponsored diamond open access journal, Engaging Science, Technology, and Society. ESTS is a vibrant peer-reviewed venue for addressing how science and technology infuse the world in which we live.
The journal publishes peer-reviewed content in both long-form and short-form genres: original research articles, thematic collections, engagements, perspectives, an...
Hybrid Participation
Published On: Jan 24, 2025
Deadline: Aug 20, 2025
An important update to the planning for the 4S Meeting in Seattle in September. In a change of course, we are planning to enable hybrid participation. This meeting will be predominantly in person, but with hybrid set-up to enable online participation as well. Submissions to the conference are due one week from today, on Friday January 31st: https://www.4sonline.org/meeting.php
All best,
Anne
4S President
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
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.
The Hidden Labor of Translation: Introduction to Special Issue
Clémence Pinel
Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Translational medicine is concerned with hastening the application of basic scientific discoveries at the bench toward beneficial clinical outcomes at the bedside. Disrupting...
Invisible Participation: Patients with Oncological and Rare Diseases in Russia
Olga Temina
Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Scholars have paid much attention to patients’ participation in healthcare, such as engagement in activities developed by healthcare providers and involvement in patient...
Co-Design in Practice: Bringing STS to Post-Brexit Agricultural Policy
Judith Tsouvalis
Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Following the Brexit referendum, the United Kingdom's Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) began to "co-design" a new agri-environment policy for...
Afterword: Reflections on the (In)Visibility of Labor in Translational Medicine
James Mittra
Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
In this paper I unpack and critically reflect on some of the key insights each paper in this Special Issue if ST&HV offers on the in(visibilities) of labor and practices...
Multi-Faceted Platform Politics in the Design of the Korean Digital Environmental Impact Assessment System
Eun-Sung Kim
Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This article examines the multi-faceted politics of digital platforms in the context of the Korean Digital Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA) system. Based on semi-structured...
Engaging Science, Technology and Society
Engaging Science, Technology, & Society is an online, open access publication of The Society for Social Studies of Science.
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
Towards fairness in machine learning for dermatology: a skin tone representation disparities study
And the winner is…Alphafold!
Reimagining Disease Modelling and Outbreak Analysis: A Report on the "Critical Social Science Approaches to Epidemic Intelligence" Workshop
Re:Constructs | Exchanges between STS and Sociology
Backchannels content is contributed by our members to highlight news relevant to their work.
Making and Doing: STS Beyond the Four Corners of the Paper
STS News
Items submitted by the community and emailed to members monthly.
Editor(s), Open-Access Journal Engaging Science, Technology, and Society
The journal publishes peer-reviewed content in both long-form and short-form genres: original research articles, thematic collections, engagements, perspectives, an...
Workshop on Equity and Inclusion Research in Academia
CfP | Peer Review in the Age of Large Language Models Workshop
With the emergence of large language models (LLMs), some scholars have begun to experiment with the use of these tools in various academic tasks, including peer review. Recent studies have suggested LLMs could play some legitimate role in peer review processes. However, significant concerns have been raised about potential biases; violations ...
Hybrid Participation
All best,
Anne
4S President