85. New Methods and New Challenges for Social Studies of Mathematics
Michael Barany, University of Edinburgh; Zheng Li, China Association for Science and Technology;
This open panel invites presentations that consider new methods or fresh uses of established methods in the social study of mathematics, together with presentations of how social studies of mathematics can address new and emerging challenges in and beyond academia. This panel continues a tradition in recent 4S meetings of having an open panel that brings together scholars in 4S studying the mathematical sciences. We are interested in new analytic approaches to the study of the production and use of mathematical knowledge, mathematical communities, and mathematical people, using data and tools operating at different scales to bring new perspectives to this field. We seek researchers bringing the social study of mathematics to issues in computing, artificial intelligence, climate change, geopolitics, academic ecology, trust and misinformation, public understanding and accountability, cultural diversity and interaction, and any other timely challenges to which social studies of mathematics may have something to offer. We will collectively ask what motivates and justifies social studies of the mathematical sciences, and how such studies speak to our scholarly communities and the wider world.
Keywords: University-Society Relations, Studies about the History of Science, Disciplines and the Social Organization of Science and Technology, methodology, mathematics, mathematical sciences, mathematics and politics, mathematics and society, research tools, academic ecology, public understanding
