Linguists first used the term backchannel to refer to the spontaneous responses and signals that provide interactivity to what is only apparently a one-way communication. Social media users have adopted the term to refer to the unofficial, multi-directional online conversation that parallels formal academic exchange at a lecture or conference. The Backchannels blog is intended to have a similar relationship to scholarly discourse in STS. It provides an outlet for alternative-format scholarly communications, publishing shorter, timelier, media-rich communiques of interest to the global STS community. The editors welcome proposed contributions.
Nov 10 2025
In this report from the 10th STS Italia conference in Milan, Benedetta Catanzariti (University of Edinburgh) and Natalia Rozalia Avlona (University of Copenhagen) share the central interventions presented by scholars contributing to discussions on “Re-ordering Care: Algorithmic Transformations of Medical Knowledge, Practice, and Governance”. Troubling the techno-optimist promises of algorithmic efficiency and expediency that increasingly shape the healthcare industry, the authors and...
Dec 1 2025
“Beheaded” STS? This report from the joint Tsinghua and Harvard-Yenching Institute program explores how scholars are using dialogue to move beyond "theoretical stress" and build a generative future for Asian STS.
Nov 7 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.
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.
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
Oct 13 2025
In this multi-media report, Holly O'Neil shared drawings and reflections from AusSTS 2025 to consider not how signal and noise might be separated, but how they are continually redefined. This report invites the reader to explore the knowledge systems that determine these categorical registers, and how noise might in fact provide productive understandings through which to work creatively with the flotsam and jetsam of signals.
Oct 11 2025
In this blog post, Nelly-Helen Ebruka reflects on the implications of space-based earth observation data sharing within the context of Africa–EU relations.
Jun 9 2025
On Hunger: Violence and Craving in America from Starvation to Ozempic (2025; UC Press) is a timely and compelling contribution to Science and Technology Studies (STS) and History of Science (HOS). Extending common threads woven throughout their prior work on vital minimums, Dr. Dana Simmons addresses an enduring pattern in United States history: the production of hunger. This book traces the production of hunger throughout the nineteenth to the present, articulating the ways in which hunger is c...
Sep 22 2025
Can energy enliven political ecology’s relationship to disability? Dr. Emerson Cram has been lingering with this question as they feel through remnants of poor farms, state asylums, and other carceral institutions negating “abnormal” dependencies.
Sep 8 2025
This report shares insights drawn from the panel “Navigating the Grey: Assemblage Thinking and Digital Artifacts” conducted during the 10th Annual STS Italia Conference hosted in Milano (11–13 June 2025). The panelists and authors of this post investigate the ways in which assemblage thinking might assist STS analyses of digital artifacts.