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Fostering interdisciplinary and engaged scholarship in social studies of science, technology, and medicine across the globe.

Latest 4S News

CfP | Special Issues in Science, Technology, & Human Values

Published On: Apr 13, 2025

Deadline: Jun 21, 2025

The editorial group of Science, Technology, & Human Values is happy to announce the journal’s annual Call for Proposals for Special Issues. 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 techn...

Encountering the data lives of the dead

Published On: May 23, 2025

Catriona Brickel considers the various ethical dilemmas encountered when studying digital memorials

The stuff of taxonomic nightmares: the frustrating volatility of color

Published On: May 22, 2025

Roos Hopman reflects on the slippery place of color within natural history

4S Publications

Science, Technology, and Human Values

For more than forty years, Science, Technology, & Human Values has provided the forum for cutting-edge research and debate in the field of science and technology studies.

Bearly Recognizable: Facial Recognition and the Wild

Emily WandererDepartment of Anthropology, 6614University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
While big tech companies are growing more circumspect about the use of facial recognition for humans, interest in nonhuman facial recognition is surging. The identification...

Between Code and Culture: The Evolving Role of Conversation Designers and UX in AI Development

Elizabeth Rodwell1Department of Information Science Technology, 14743University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Artificial intelligence (AI)-related technologies available to consumers have been rapidly advancing but without parallel insight into the social process of their design....

Machine's Eye View: Postmodern Data Science and the Politics of Ground Truth

Jathan SadowskiEmerging Technologies Research Lab, Faculty of Information Technology, 2541Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This paper advances the critical analysis of machine learning by placing it in direct relation with actuarial science as a way to further draw out their shared epistemic...

Agriculture by Algorithm: Big Data, Digitalization, and Biotechnology Under Climate Change

Yıldı‌z Atasoy1Department of Sociology and Anthropology, 1763Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Based on textual analysis of publicly available documents published by the Food and Agriculture Organization, Bayer, and its partner delivery start-ups, this paper provides...

Making the Global Local: The Case of Chinese Research and Innovation Evaluation Systems

Julia Kirch Kirkegaard, Alan Irwin, Xuan Li

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Starting with China's increasingly prominent role in the global politics of science, this paper considers the case of Chinese policies for the evaluation of Research &...

Engaging Science, Technology and Society

Engaging Science, Technology, & Society is an online, open access publication of The Society for Social Studies of Science.

Transitioning ESTS

Published On: Mar 7 2025

Grant Otsuki, Clément Dréano, Noela Invernizzi, Ali Kenner, Angela Okune, Duygu Kaşdoğan, Sujatha Raman, Tim Schütz, Federico Vasen, Amanda Windle, Emily York

Contributions to this issue focus on a wide range of domains and problematics—environment, extractivism, air pollution, climate change, digitalization, automation, care, surveillance—that offer a thought-provoking commentary...

Volatile Atmosphere: A Tkaronto Archive

Published On: Mar 10 2025

Sophia Jaworski

This article delves into the history of petrochemical-derived gas emissions in Toronto, focusing on their emergence and regulation from the end of World War II and up to 1980. Drawing on archival materials, I trace local knowledge...

Origin Stories of the ‘Grants Uranium District’ in Northwestern New Mexico: Archives, Memoirs, and Exploratory Boreholes in the Production of Geological Regions

Published On: Mar 7 2025

Thomas De Pree

The “Grants uranium district” of northwestern New Mexico yielded more uranium ore than any other mining district in the United States during the Cold War Period (1947-1989). After the national market for uranium collapsed...

Farmers’ Creativity and Cultivated Senses: The Immediacy of Embodied Knowledge in Alternative Agriculture

Published On: Mar 7 2025

Dimas Dwi Laksmana

The Indonesian government has promoted several forms of alternative agriculture in response to the productivity orientation and top-down bureaucratic institutions in intensive agriculture. Implemented in the late 1980s, the Integrated...

4S Blog: Backchannels

BOOK REVIEW: 'On Hunger: Violence and Craving in America from Starvation to Ozempic' by Dana Simmons

Aaron Gregory PhD (UC Riverside)
Jun 09, 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...

Cancer in multiple realities, medical technologies and their political implications

Tainã Queiroz
Jun 02, 2025
Tainã Queiroz discusses the incorporation of medical technologies for oncological treatments in the Brazilian health system, focusing on the challenge of combining multiple realities.

Encountering the data lives of the dead

Catriona Brickel
May 23, 2025
Catriona Brickel considers the various ethical dilemmas encountered when studying digital memorials

The stuff of taxonomic nightmares: the frustrating volatility of color

Roos Hopman
May 22, 2025
Roos Hopman reflects on the slippery place of color within natural history

Backchannels content is contributed by our members to highlight news relevant to their work.

STS News

Items submitted by the community and emailed to members monthly.

CfP | Special Issues in Science, Technology, & Human Values

Apr 13, 2025
The editorial group of Science, Technology, & Human Values is happy to announce the journal’s annual Call for Proposals for Special Issues. 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 techn...

Global Development Awards: Digital Transformation for Universal Health Coverage

Jun 10, 2025
The Global Development Awards Competition (GDAC) is GDN’s largest and longest-running programme that brings together a rich community of researchers and development practitioners. It is an award scheme that: Identifies talent and supports the career advancement of researchers in the Global South; Funds innovative social development projects implemented by NGOs that benefit marginalised groups in the developing world.
THEME - 2025 EDITION: Digital Transformation for Universal Health Cove...

SFU | Postdoc on social-ecological traps

Jun 10, 2025
In partnership with the Hatchery Modernization Team at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and the Aquatic Research Cooperative Institute at SFU, the Fisheries Management Lab is looking for a Postdoctoral researcher to lead a project on social-ecological traps associated with hatcheries. This project aims to identify types of socio-ecological traps, risk factors, and potential mitigations to aid in hatchery modernization efforts. Specifically, this project involves conducting a literature review of s...

Special Issue of Australian Feminist Studies: Feminist Methods and Interventions on AI Ethics

Jun 05, 2025
Expressions of interest are sought for contributions to a planned Special Issue (SI) of Australian Feminist Studies devoted to underexplored and novel feminist methods and interventions on AI ethics. While dominant approaches to AI ethics have been focused on reductive notions of bias or value checklists for reducing harms, intersectional feminist scholars have built upon genealogies of feminist scholarship to identify and outline the broader and more nuanced ethical issues that arise in the des...