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

Latest 4S News

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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Underground and Underwater Mining: State Extractivism and the Socio-ecological Transformations of Socialist Bulgaria

Stefan Dorondel, Stelu Serban, Gabriela Ioana-Toroimac

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This paper examines two types of extractive activities: an underground gypsum exploitation and the extraction of sand and gravel from the Danube riverbed. Through long-term...

Testing and Errors: Aligning Cybersecurity Expertise in Contemporary UK Energy Infrastructures

Ola Michalec11980Bristol Digital Futures Institute, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Digitalization of the grid promises a sustainable energy system. However, we do not fully understand how innovative technologies are introduced—and challenged—in legacy...

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....

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.

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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

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."

The Reflexive Primatologist

Quinn Georgic
Feb 02, 2026
This post is the third 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. The following post in the series will be released on February 16th, 2026.

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 | 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.

The Center for Ethnography at the Colorado School of Mines | two Post-Doctoral positions in environmental social science

Feb 25, 2026
The Center for Ethnography at the Colorado School of Mines invites applications for two Post-Doctoral positions in environmental social science with expertise in ethnography. The Center is a new hub at Mines that emphasizes community partnerships, collaborative research and public writing on major social and environmental issues in rural America, including the American West and Western Arctic.

Technical University of Munich | Postdoctoral Research Associate in Participatory Approaches to Artificial Intelligence and Justice

Feb 25, 2026
We are looking for a 100% postdoctoral research associate beginning in Summer 2026, for a term of 2 years with the possibility of an extension. The postdoc will join the ERC-Starting Grant project team on “Participatory Algorithmic Justice: A multi-sited ethnography to advance algorithmic justice through participatory design” (PARTIALJUSTICE) to examine issues of justice and participation in artificial intelligence (AI), led by Dr. Amelia Fiske.

CfP | Theorizing Science Studies from Central and Eastern Europe

Feb 20, 2026
We invite contributions to the edited volume Theorizing Science Studies from Central and Eastern Europe, to appear in Palgrave’s Transnationalizing Theory in Science and Technology Studies series, which is in line with the transnationalization initiatives of the Society for Social Studies of Science.
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