The theme of the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science – Innovations, Interruptions, Regenerations – calls for presentations, panels and other events that are innovative in form and content, conveying and examining insights from science and technology studies (STS) into innovation itself, innovations in STS and ways STS can be both a source and site of regenerations of many kinds. Extending the transnational character and commitments of 4S, the meeting will highlight STS innovations in different locations – in education, research, practice, and academic organizing. The meeting will include a Making & Doing exhibit, and a special exhibit – Innovating STS – that will showcase how diverse STS departments, networks, organizations and streams of scholarship (actor-network theory, feminist and postcolonial STS, and so on) have taken shape, continually interrupting and regenerating the field as a whole.
Conference sessions will examine how STS can interrupt entrenched ideas in innovative ways, generating alternative possibilities and pathways. STS studies of innovation will be highlighted, drawing out how the promise of innovation has both created space for STS in many settings and prompted important critiques. Sessions will also advance critical perspectives on ideas, practices and infrastructures in STS itself, opening discussion about STS and 4S futures. Events that bring people together in new ways – within and beyond the setting of the meeting itself – are especially encouraged, as are activities that draw conference participants into issues of special importance in New Orleans, the broader Gulf Coast region and the Anthropocene writ large. Zooming in to local conditions and out to structural dynamics and shared problems, the 2019 4S meeting will provide rich opportunities to reflect on and regenerate both STS and 4S.
(View translations of the 2019 Meeting Theme.)
