Since 1972, Science, Technology, & Human Values has provided a forum for cutting-edge research and debate in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). This is a collectively edited, peer-reviewed, transnational, interdisciplinary journal containing research, analyses and commentary on the development and dynamics of science and technology, with a focus on their relationship to politics, economy, society and culture.

ST&HV publishes and seeks to foster work that is politically and ethically engaged from scholars from across the social sciences and humanities. It is committed to publishing both field-defining and field-extending work, expanding the purview of the field into new areas, and intervening in a common set of conceptual and topical conversations. The journal publishes work that contributes to STS and makes a contribution with STS, emphasising that theory, method and practice unfold in situated assemblages.

To find out more about the journal, read it, or submit your research for consideration, please visit the publisher‘s website.


Special Issues 

The editorial group of Science, Technology, & Human Values announces the journal’s 2024 Call for Proposals for Special Issues. The process for this Call for Proposals is:

  1. Interested scholars should submit a proposal using the Google form by 21 June 2024. All proposals should include a working title for the Special Issue; names, affiliations, and short biographies of guest editors (100 words each); a 800-word outline of the proposed Special Issue theme (approx. 400 words) and its significant contribution to the field of STS (approx. 400 words); and, the names, affiliations, and short abstracts for 3-4 potential contributions. Proposals will be selected on the basis of: a) overall quality; b) the extent to which they represent a field-defining intervention in STS; c) their potential to attract a diverse range of contributions from scholars internationally. 
  2. In August 2024, the editors of ST&HV will choose one Special Issue proposal to proceed. The editors may also select and invite other proposals to proceed as shorter Thematic Collections if suitable.
  3. The editors of the selected Special Issue proposal(s) will issue an open call for further proposed articles on their theme, closing no earlier than 1 October 2024. A Special Issue will typically contain 7-8 research articles. Diversity of contributions from scholars internationally, and at different career stages, is encouraged.
  4. The guest editors of the selected Special Issue proposal(s) will submit the full Special Issue for peer review no later than 1 March 2025. Individual manuscripts should be no more than 8,000 words including endnotes and references. Articles that are accepted through peer review will subsequently appear OnlineFirst as ready before the publication of the Special Issue in full, anticipated in 2026.

Please submit your proposal using the Google form by 21 June 2024. All general inquiries should be sent in the first instance to Carolina Caliaba (Managing Editor) at sthvjournal@gmail.com

You can find out more about ST&HV’s current submission requirements and style guide. For more on what constitutes a contribution to the field of STS, see the editor’s recent editorial: What is an STS Contribution Now?


Recent Publications

Fresh or Thawed T Cells?: How Modes of Bioavailability Matter in the Study of Translational Medicine

Violeta Argudo-PortalAuthor Biography Violeta Argudo-Portal is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Barcelona. Her work combines science and technology studies and social anthropology to study how biomedical knowledge is organized, produced, and distributed.1Department of Social Anthropology, University of Barcelona, Spain

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Volume 50, Issue 2, Page 274-298, March 2025.
This article explores how cell immunotherapy becomes deliverable at the in-betweens of the bench, bedside, and community in translational...

Habilitation beyond the Bionic Metaphor: Producing Deafnesses of the Future

Stephanie Lloyd, Chani Bonventre1Université Laval, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Volume 50, Issue 2, Page 336-363, March 2025.
In this article, we travel back to the early days of experimental use of cochlear implants (CIs) in the 1970s, when unsettled expectations...

Miscellaneous Care: Bridging the In-between of Translational Medicine

Isabel Briz HernándezAuthor Biography Isabel Briz Hernández received her doctoral degree from the Department of Anthropology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her work engages with ongoing debates in anthropology and science and technology studies on the production of scientific and biomedical knowledge, and the lived experience of patients and their caregivers in the postgenomic era.1New Asia College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Volume 50, Issue 2, Page 251-273, March 2025.
Based on fieldwork in China on oncology clinical trials for immunotherapy which involve foreign patients as trial subjects, in this paper,...

Vanguard Visions of Vertical Farming: Envisaging and Contesting an Emerging Food Production System

Mascha GugganigAuthor Biography Mascha Gugganig is a social and cultural anthropologist, an STS scholar, and curator for research exhibitions on contested (agri-food) technologies and sciences. She is a lecturer at the Chair of Life Sciences in Society at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich and a senior research associate at the Department of Science, Technology & Society at the Technical University Munich. Since its foundation in 2019, she has been an active member of STSFAN, the Science & Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network.

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Volume 50, Issue 2, Page 387-418, March 2025.
Vertical farming is an emerging urban food growth proposal that has gained considerable attention for its ability to be space-efficient, independent...

Scaling Up or Deep Scaling? Problematizing the Scalability Imperative in Technological Innovation

Brice Laurent, Alexandre ViolleAuthor Biographies Brice Laurent is a senior researcher at the Center for the Sociology of Innovation at Mines Paris. His research focuses on the relations between innovation and democracy. He has published on emerging technologies and the democratic issues they raise, the politics of regulation, and the politics of real-world experiments. His books include Democratic Experiments (2017) and European Objects (2022). Alexandre Violle is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for the Sociology of Innovation at Mines Paris. He is interested in the ways in which expertise based on economic knowledge or theories of innovation contributes to shaping the way in which public action is conceived and carried out, whether in France or Europe, in various sectors (banking, energy, metal, and mineral supply).

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Volume 50, Issue 2, Page 419-446, March 2025.
This paper problematizes the obsession with “scaling up” that is visible in numerous technological domains. Using the case of hydrogen...