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

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CfP | InterAcademy Partnership Competitive Grants

Published On: Oct 18, 2024

Deadline: Dec 2, 2024

The InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) invites proposals from IAP member academies and regional networks, for projects that would help advance IAP’s mission and strategic goals. Proposed projects should preferably be collaborative across member academies and regional networks. Priority will be given to project proposals that aim to establish or continue support for collaborations across disciplines (for example, collaborations across academies of science, medicine and engineering), especially ...

Chronicity and Its Social Lives: Reflections on Everyday Experiences of Osteoarthritis

Published On: Nov 7, 2025

Deadline: Sep 15, 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.

Call for Assistant Editors for 4S Backchannels (Global South)

Published On: Nov 27, 2025

Deadline: Dec 15, 2025

The Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) is looking for STS graduate students, postdocs or early career scholars from/based in the Global South (especially Africa, Middle East, Asia) who can contribute as Assistant Editors for 4S Backchannels.
The candidate will be part of the team sharing and disseminating STS news, research from/about Global South in the form of short academic writings. Besides some editorial skills, they will encourage potential authors to contribute with their w...

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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.

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Mythologies of Wealth in Platform Economies: The Case of the Ride-Hailing Platform Didi in China

Jack Linzhou Xing, Jun Zhang, Gonçalo D. Santos

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This article reactivates the concept of myth—which is well-developed in social science literature—to study digital technologies and platform economies. It conceptualizes...

A Tool, Connector, or Data Processor: On the Multiplicity of an Algorithm and Its Worlds

Ida Schrøder, Helene Friis Ratner, Laura Kocksch

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This paper explores the development of an algorithm for child welfare administration in Denmark. Based on an ethnographic study of the development process, we argue that...

The Pharmaceutical Industry and Its Subalterns: Venom Procurement, Ethnic Identities and Labor Exploitation in Indian Capitalism

Mathieu Quet, Ariane Zelisko, Kishore Kumar

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Pharmaceutical capitalism is often framed as a financially sophisticated and technology-intensive value-creation domain. This approach, as relevant as it can be, neglects...

Consolidating the Strata: Geoscience and Underground Territory in South Korean Radioactive Waste Disposal

Sungeun KimDepartment II, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
In South Korea, the nation with the world's highest density of nuclear power plants, the disposal of high-level radioactive waste has become a pressing sociotechnical concern....

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....

Engaging Science, Technology and Society

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

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The Difference—and Promise—of ESTS

Published On: Dec 31 2025

Aalok Khandekar, Clément Dréano, Noela Invernizzi, Ali Kenner, Duygu Kaşdoğan, Grant Jun Otsuki, Angela Okune, Sujatha Raman, Tim Schütz, Federico Vasen, A N Windle, Emily York

In this final editorial for the 2020–2025 Editorial Collective, we reflect on how we have worked to action on our key editorial commitments, which included: cultivating greater transnationalization in the field, deepening open...

What Do We Mean When We Say Carbon Capture and Storage? STS and the Open Questions of a Technology in Emergence

Published On: Dec 31 2025

Vivian Underhill, Jessica Smith

Carbon sequestration is a relatively recent phrase that refers to a broad suite of technologies meant to minimize the amount of carbon emitted to the atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and many scientific...

How Transnational is 4S? Institutional Scaffolding and the Long Road to a Global STS

Published On: Dec 31 2025

Noela Invernizzi, Sofía Foladori-Invernizzi

This article examines the transnationalization of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), analyzing its evolution from a predominantly North American and Eurocentric organization to a more globally inclusive scholarly...

When ‘Open’ is Still Far from Good Enough: The Work of Counter-Mapping with Political Software

Published On: Dec 31 2025

Luis Felipe R. Murillo, Erin McElroy

What does “openness” mean when it comes to crafting digital tools and infrastructures for housing justice action research? This question is particularly urgent as global internet companies unleash new geospatial technologies...

4S Blog: Backchannels

Between the Lab and the Clinic: Perspectives from Medical Humanities and Science and Technology Studies (STS)

Kristin D. Hussey (Newcastle University), Hannah Star Rogers (University of Copenhagen)
Mar 16, 2026
In this cross-listed post from Polyphony, Kristin D. Hussey and Hannah Star Rogers draw on Science and Technology Studies (STS) to think through how the ‘lab’ is being employed across the medical humanities. Connecting the intellectual space of the Medical Humanities’ emphasis on the clinic and STS approaches to the laboratory, the authors propose the productivity of further exchanges between these two fields around these complex concepts.

Killing Kindly: Invasive Species, Care, and Greenwork in Aotearoa New Zealand

Katie Kung
Mar 02, 2026
As part of the research that considers killing as care, this essay discusses kindness as a way to approach the rich scholarship of multispecies care by framing it as resistance to acquiescing to the moral certainty of killing invasive species by negotiating cruelty and avowing ambiguity. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Aotearoa New Zealand, this piece outlines some of the ways to examine care and killing by analysing how and when kindness affects the work of killing for conservation.

A Conversation on Embryonic Indonesian STS

Indrawan Prabaharyaka, Irina Rafliana and Casper Bruun Jensen
Feb 23, 2026
This post is a conversation between Irina Rafliana, Indrawan Prabaharyaka, and Casper Bruun Jensen on the challenges and possibilities of embryonic Indonesian STS.

Sex, Gender, and Hybrid Primate Worlds

Lilith Frakes
Feb 16, 2026
This post is the fourth in a four-part series on “Sex and Gender in Primate Worlds,” following up on a panel of the same name at the 4S 2025 convening in Seattle, Washington, held on September 6th, 2025. This post reflects on the conference paper, “Toward a Hybrid Primatology: Purity and Knowledge in the Anthropocene."

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

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Making and Doing: STS Beyond the Four Corners of the Paper

STS News

Items submitted by the community and emailed to members monthly.

CfP | DIY Methods: Conference on Experimental Methods for Research and Research Exchange

Mar 31, 2026
DIY Methods is an unconventional conference about unconventional approaches to research methods in the social sciences and humanities. It takes place through the mail, via print zines made by researchers around the world, exploring new ways to conduct and communicate their work. We welcome pitches for zines researchers have already made, or would like to make, along these themes. Pitches should describe both the form and content of the zine, and how these considerations relate to one another and...

CfP | In Collaboration On Cooperation: Research In Linguistics Within French-Polish Teams

Mar 31, 2026
The proposed conference (9–10 July 2026, Paris) will constitute the first event entirely devoted to French-Polish scientific cooperation in linguistics. It will provide an opportunity to present a wide range of collaborative projects, showcase results from mixed research teams, exchange views on current issues and trends, strengthen existing ties, and foster the emergence of new forms of collaboration.

CfP | Sovereign AI and Digital Sovereignty

Mar 31, 2026
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence has intensified debates over digital sovereignty worldwide. As AI systems increasingly shape economic activities, political discourse, and social interactions, the ability to develop indigenous AI capabilities and control digital infrastructure becomes essential to national autonomy. This Theme Collection examines how different nations experience and respond to these challenges.

CfP | Biomimicry & the Nature of Technoscience

Feb 27, 2026
This Call for Papers welcomes submissions for a series on ‘Biomimicry & the Nature of Technoscience’. 4S Backchannels seeks contributions from established and emerging scholars engaging broadly with biomimicry, biotechnology, biovalue, biocapital, bioprospecting, and the biopolitics that emerge throughout. Submissions should include original reflections and research contributions, and may attend to historical, contemporary, or speculative domains.
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