Click to Submit a Proposal or Abstract
Call for Abstracts and Proposals:
December 15, 2024 – January 31, 2025
Notification of Acceptance: March 15, 2025
4S 2025 in-person conference: September 3–7, 2025
The conference will be in-person only.
We invite submissions of abstracts, closed panels, roundtables, Making & Doing sessions, zines, and meetups that align with the conference theme. To reverberate is to echo, to repeat, to transmit further, to convey. Reverberations are also relays—wave-like, rolling, seismic or subtle—between points in space and time, felt evidence of distant yet interpenetrating events. In this sense, to reverberate is to exhibit a strange kind of force—an infinite regress of effects perceived as causes perceived as effects. For STS, reverberation figures science and technology not only as an effect of myriad practices and multiple agencies but also as normative sites where diverse politics and disparate struggles are resounded, reworked, and—consequentially—reactivated.
Participation guidelines
There are several ways to participate in the 4S 2025 conference: participating in an open panel, organizing or participating in closed panels, commenting on papers, presenting in a Making & Doing session or the zine festival, or a roundtable or meetup session.
In order to enable many people’s participation, the conference chairs will follow the following guideline. Each participant will be limited to one role as a presenter and two additional non-presenter roles at the conference. Non-presenter roles include organizing or chairing a session, being a discussant in a session, organizing or participating in roundtables, and participating in a Making & Doing session. For those presenting at 4S for the first time, it is worth noting the Society's ethos on co-authored papers. By discouraging more well-known authors from presenting multiple co-authored papers, we hope to encourage and provide the opportunity for other co-authors to take that presenting role, as a way to foster more inclusive engagement.
We invite submissions for closed panels that align with the conference theme of Reverberations. We are interested in proposals that expand our understanding of how science and technology, broadly understood, have enabled or hindered the processes of shaping the world today. We seek critical reflection but also speculations, ongoing experiments, and practices that encourage the possibility of building new solidarities. In that sense, we welcome theoretical analyses from different paradigms as well as empirical and historical studies, in the long and fruitful tradition of 4S.
Organizing a closed panel
A panel proposal must contain a minimum of three paper abstracts that meet the above criteria. A maximum of six time slots per 100-minute session is available (e.g. 5 papers plus 1 discussant). A panel may cover more than one session and up to a maximum of three. The composition of panels is ultimately determined by the Program Committee. If your proposal contains fewer than five papers, the Committee may (in consultation with you) allocate additional papers to your panel to optimize scheduling and participation.
The Program Committee will consider proposals for a limited number of Author meets Critics panels. To the extent possible, Author meets Critics panels should discuss two books per panel. The panel should treat both books together and should reflect the diversity of work and scholarship in the STS Field. It is suggested to discuss recently awarded books or books whose contributions are considered substantive or original. Please submit the Author meets Critics proposals as closed panels.
For an overview of the multi-step submission process for a closed panel, please review this walk-through video or this text and screenshot based guide.
Submissions to open panels should be presented in the form of abstracts of up to 250 words. For traditional papers, your abstract should include a brief description of the main arguments, methods and contributions to STS. For submissions of experimental formats of knowledge expression to Combined Format panels, your abstract should include a brief description of your contribution in relation to the Open Panel description and to STS. For both traditional papers and experimental formats of knowledge expression, your abstract should clearly state how your submission connects to the open panel as well as the broader conference theme.
When submitting your abstract, you will be asked to designate one or more areas of STS research and add keywords. In addition, you will select up to two accepted open panels to host your contribution. In this way, we reinforce the possibility of your submission being placed in thematically connected sessions, thus facilitating networking and scholarly discussion.
View descriptions of the 2025 Open Panels.
For an overview of the multi-step submission process, please review this walk-through video for submissions to open panels.
The Making & Doing Program highlights scholarly practices for producing, expressing, and disseminating STS knowledge and expertise that extend beyond traditional forms of academic production. It encourages STS researchers to share work involving participatory, speculative, reflexive, aesthetic and/or other unconventional approaches to the study of science, technology, and society, as well as projects that experiment with frameworks for producing, sharing, and reconfiguring knowledge.
The 2025 Annual Meeting will mark the 10th anniversary of the STS Making & Doing Program. In line with the 2025 theme of Reverberations, we also invite proposals that reflect on the potential manifestation and inclusion of myriad inventive research modes and methods along with the many well-established, expected, and accepted ones in STS.
Submissions to Making & Doing should include:
Participation in the Making and Doing event does not count toward limits on conference participation described elsewhere. Find galleries of past Making & Doing exhibitions here.
For an overview of the multi-step submission process, please review this walk-through video for Making & Doing submissions.
Celebrating the creative, political, and analytic work of research-dissemination beyond the academic paper, 4S Seattle will include two zine tracks with materials hosted online and in a zine library at the conference.
In the refereed track, scholars are invited to submit abstracts that describe both the form and content of a proposed (or already existing) zine that addresses STS themes. Abstracts should be in English (though the final zine does not have to be) and roughly 250–500 words in length. Abstracts will be juried and the authors of approved proposals will be invited to submit full copies to the conference (2–5 print copies for circulation in Seattle, and a digital version to be compiled in an online proceedings, to be hosted on the 4S website).
In the non-refereed track, scholars are invited to bring print copies (of any quantity) of their zines with STS themes to 4S Seattle’s zine library. Zines in this track will not be included in the online proceedings. This is an entirely voluntary and non-binding part of the conference; as such, non-refereed zine contributors do not need to submit anything for review on this platform, nor will they be officially recognized in the conference schedule or via an acceptance letter. It’s an open invitation to drop off things that you think will be of interest to fellow attendees, without needing to go through the process of refereeing your submission.
The Zine Festival contemplates hybrid attendance. Attendees in Seattle will be able to drop in to the zine library during regular conference hours to peruse the collection. Online audiences will be able to engage with the digital proceedings. All audiences will be able to vote in a people’s choice award for their favorite zine.
The submissions process for the Zine Festival is similar to Making & Doing; please review this walk-through video for Making & Doing submissions for an overview of Zine Festival submissions.
Questions can be addressed to the Zine Festival chairs, Anne Pasek and Gabrielle Benabdallah.
We invite the submission of roundtables that do not require formal papers and take a more conversational format.
A roundtable proposal requires at least 1 organizer and 2 presenters, as well as the title and abstract (up to 250 words) of the roundtable. Participants do not need to submit paper titles and abstracts.
Due to extremely limited space, we may not be able to accommodate all proposals.
4S conferences regularly host less formal social meetups or meetings around research communities, publishing communities, shared approaches (such as the annual feminist or decolonial STS meet ups), research topics, or regional foci.
Please submit a short (up to 200 words) description of your meetup. (These descriptions are for the organizing committee's information, and will not appear in the conference program.)
Most meetups will be allocated 1-hour slots, but we will accept a limited number of requests for longer sessions. Please indicate if you would like to request a longer session. You may also make requests for catering for meetups.
Submission and meeting questions can be directed to meeting@4sonline.org