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

Latest 4S News

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 ...

Chronicity and Its Social Lives: Reflections on Everyday Experiences of Osteoarthritis

Published On: Nov 7, 2025

Deadline: Sep 15, 2025

In this post, Perseverence Madhuku discusses the tensions between biomedical, social, and personal understandings of ageing, immobility, and care in Zimbabwe through the case study of Osteoarthritis.

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...

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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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Consolidating the Strata: Geoscience and Underground Territory in South Korean Radioactive Waste Disposal

Sungeun KimDepartment II, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
In South Korea, the nation with the world's highest density of nuclear power plants, the disposal of high-level radioactive waste has become a pressing sociotechnical concern....

“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...

Rethinking Extractivism in a Changing Climate: Complementary Gold and Coffee Livelihoods in the Steep, Tropical Andes

Casey Gibson, Jessica Smith1Department of Engineering, Design, & Society, 3557Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, USA

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
In the municipality of Andes, agriculture rules the steep surface ofla tierra, while informal miners pick and blast subterranean tunnels to make a living from gold. While...

Autonomy Where the Underground and Aboveground Meet: Processing Plants in Colombian Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining

Mateo Francisco Rojas, Jessica M. Smith, Juan C. Lucena, Oscar Jaime Restrepo Baena

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Social science research about extraction often conflates mining and ore processing activities or disregards processing altogether. This article highlights the value of...

Indigenous Environmental Data Justice: Confronting Colonial Data and Activating Indigenous Sovereignty

María Fernanda Yanchapaxi, M. Murphy1Technoscience Research Unit, 7938University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This article offers Indigenous Environmental Data Justice (IEDJ) as a framework related to, but importantly distinct from, Environmental Data Justice. IEDJ points to the...

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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ESTS Incoming Editorial – A New Editorial Collective for ESTS

Published On: Jul 9 2026

Erika Szymanski, Greg Hollin, Aparajita Bhandari, Clément Dréano, Georg Hoehne, Dasom Lee, Óscar Moreno-Martínez, Lucas Nishida, Andrea Quinlan, Kendall Roark, Pankaj Sekhsaria, Federico Vasen, Richa Venkatraman, Susann Wagenknecht

We write to introduce ourselves as the new Editorial Collective for Engaging Science, Technology, and Society. This editorial describes how we are taking up the journal's mission of openness, building on the work of ESTS’s prior...

How Moderation Makes Science: Precautionary Valuation and Boundary-Making in the Early Circulation of Research

Published On: Jul 10 2026

Natascha Chtena, Irene V. Pasquetto, Alice Fleerackers, Stephen Pinfield, Melanie Benson Marshall, Juan Pablo Alperin

As preprint servers proliferate across scientific fields, moderation has emerged as a lightly structured form of gatekeeping that precedes—or bypasses—peer review. This article examines moderation as a site of precautionary...

Commitment Issues in Science & Technology Studies: On the Necessity of Compromising One’s Principles

Published On: Jul 10 2026

Bård Torvetjønn Haugland, Alexander Myklebust

There have been longstanding discussions regarding the place of normative commitments in Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholarship. Analysing STS critiques of Innovation Studies and accounts of the institutionalisation...

Sounding Uncertainties: An Embodied Strategy for Digital Ethnographic Archives

Published On: Jul 13 2026

Katja de Neergaard

STS scholars have discussed how the technologies we study are becoming part of our infrastructures for research, sparking new forms of collaboration and a growing interest in open research data and digital ethnographic archives....

4S Blog: Backchannels

Technobotany & the New Space Race

Aaron Gregory (University of California, Riverside)
Aug 03, 2026
This article introduces 'technobotany' and the entanglements of botany and technology that shape the nature of science and society. It examines the new space race as a technobotanical frontier featuring photosynthetic technologies designed to power lunar outposts and Martian colonies, anticipating the extraction of rare metals and minerals for energy-intensive societies on Earth.

Institutionalising STS in China: A New National Committee Is Founded

Wan Zhaoyuan
Aug 03, 2026
This report reflects on the establishment of the Science, Technology and Society (STS) Committee of the Chinese Society for the History of Science and Technology, formally founded during a national symposium at Beijing Normal University in June 2026. The milestone marks a significant step in the institutionalisation of STS in China, bringing together scholars from across the country while strengthening connections with the international STS community.

Symbiosis and a mid-2020s hepatitis B vaccine research controversy

Benjamin Hegarty
Jul 27, 2026
In 2025, a controversy erupted over a study into the safety and “non-specific effects” of the hepatitis B vaccine among children in Guinea-Bissau. This post traces the life of the concept of “non-specific effects”, from the early 1990s to the political context of the mid-2020s.

On the Development and Formalisation of STS in Indonesia: A Personal Reflection on Sustaining Epistemological Sovereignty

Anton Novenanto
Jul 20, 2026
Anton Novenanto writes a thought-provoking reflection, offering to understand STS initiatives in Indonesia as projects countering the neoliberalisation of knowledge. The text is available in Indonesian and English.

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.

CfP | The Social Ecology of Tropical Zoonotic and Vector-Borne Diseases

Jul 30, 2026
We invite submissions for a special issue titled "The Social Ecology of Tropical Zoonotic and Vector-borne Diseases" in Acta Tropica, a journal focused on infectious diseases, public health, medical and veterinary entomology, and biomedical research. This issue explores how social, political, cultural, and ecological factors interact to shape the distribution and dynamics of tropical vector-borne and zoonotic diseases.

University of Victoria | Aspiration Research Chair in AI and Cultural Change

Jul 30, 2026
The Faculty of Humanities at the University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada) invites applications for an Aspiration Research Chair in AI and Cultural Change. Aspiration Research Chairs are intended for exceptional researchers acknowledged as leaders in their field, with recognized success in research-inspired teaching and fostering collaborative and interdisciplinary research. The Aspiration Research Chair’s research will ideally be centered on AI, cultural change, and authoritariani...

Johns Hopkins University | Associate or Full Professor (Tenure-Track) in History of Medicine: Pre-Modern

Jul 30, 2026
The Johns Hopkins Department of the History of Medicine of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine invites applications for tenure-track faculty at the rank of Associate or Full Professor. The Department seeks a new colleague in the area of pre-modern medicine, health, and healing before 1800 whose research is innovative and agenda-setting and would extend the scope of the department’s research, teaching, and expertise.

New Book | Reading Science/Fiction: Practices, Pleasures and Publics

Jul 30, 2026
This book explores the relationship between reading science in fiction and engaging with science, showing how reading speculative fiction can make sense of technoscientific societies and the futures they generate. Focusing on embodied readers and empirical approaches to fiction reading, the authors examine contemporary social, cultural, biographical and political contexts in which science fictions come to matter.
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