4S Mission

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

Latest 4S News

CfP | Science as Culture Special Issue: Colonial Relations in Modern Techno-Securitisation

Published On: Nov 11, 2024

Deadline: Apr 30, 2025

‘Security’ has become an increasingly dominant frame in recent decades, linking issues such as climate, biodiversity, borders, energy, food and military activities. Ever-more societal issues have been framed as security problems, even as existential threats. These frames seek to justify pre-emptive management through technoscientific expert systems, imagining control over everything and fostering an authoritarian culture. This SaC special issue will explore linkages among three dynam...

Hybrid Participation

Published On: Jan 24, 2025

Deadline: Aug 20, 2025

An important update to the planning for the 4S Meeting in Seattle in September. In a change of course, we are planning to enable hybrid participation. This meeting will be predominantly in person, but with hybrid set-up to enable online participation as well. Submissions to the conference are due one week from today, on Friday January 31st: https://www.4sonline.org/meeting.php
 
All best,
Anne
4S President

Editor(s), Open-Access Journal Engaging Science, Technology, and Society

Published On: Jan 17, 2025

Deadline: Mar 31, 2025

The Publications Committee of the Society for Social Studies of Science solicits nominations and proposals for Editor(s) to lead the 4S-sponsored diamond open access journal, Engaging Science, Technology, and Society. ESTS is a vibrant peer-reviewed venue for addressing how science and technology infuse the world in which we live.
The journal publishes peer-reviewed content in both long-form and short-form genres: original research articles, thematic collections, engagements, perspectives, an...

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.

Invisible Participation: Patients with Oncological and Rare Diseases in Russia

Olga Temina

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Scholars have paid much attention to patients’ participation in healthcare, such as engagement in activities developed by healthcare providers and involvement in patient...

Co-Design in Practice: Bringing STS to Post-Brexit Agricultural Policy

Judith Tsouvalis

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Following the Brexit referendum, the United Kingdom's Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) began to "co-design" a new agri-environment policy for...

Afterword: Reflections on the (In)Visibility of Labor in Translational Medicine

James Mittra

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
In this paper I unpack and critically reflect on some of the key insights each paper in this Special Issue if ST&HV offers on the in(visibilities) of labor and practices...

Multi-Faceted Platform Politics in the Design of the Korean Digital Environmental Impact Assessment System

Eun-Sung Kim

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This article examines the multi-faceted politics of digital platforms in the context of the Korean Digital Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA) system. Based on semi-structured...

Self-care Against the Grain: Normative Negotiations in Contraceptive Self-Tracking

Ellen Algera

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Critical sociologists argue that reproductive self-tracking applications (apps) intensify existing norms regarding the female body. Yet, we have little empirical data on...

Engaging Science, Technology and Society

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

Standards, Pedagogies, and Celebrating the STS Infrastructure Award to ESTS

Published On: Dec 1 2024

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

Volume 10 comes in two parts, issue 1 and 2 published together. The double issue includes two Thematic Collections, “Standards and their Containers” and “Pedagogical Intersections.” It also includes two original research...

Tracing the Displacement of Data Work in AI: A Political Economy of “Human-in-the-Loop”

Published On: Dec 2 2024

Bidisha Chaudhuri, Srravya Chandhiramowuli

In this study, we trace the evolution of a data work team in an artificial intelligence (AI) startup in India. By bringing attention to data work, which is the indispensable work of preparing annotated datasets for training AI...

Renewable Ruse: Bioenergy Development in North Carolina’s Coastal Plains

Published On: Dec 1 2024

Dana Powell, Jefferson Currie, Danielle Koonce, Mac Legerton, Rebecca Witter

Rural communities in eastern North Carolina are responding to the emergence of bioenergy development as an extension of environmental injustices, rather than sustainable solutions to climate change as presented by state and industry...

Storying Monocrop Infrastructure: A Conversation on Governance, Scale, and Failure

Published On: Dec 2 2024

Sophie Chao, Kregg Hetherington

Plantations have recently become the focus of renewed empirical and conceptual inquiry across the social sciences, arts, and humanities. Scholarship in this interdisciplinary space calls on us to reckon with industrial monocultures’...

4S Blog: Backchannels

And the winner is…Alphafold!

Alexandre Hocquet (Université de Lorraine), Frédéric Wieber (Käte Hamburger Kolleg), Marcus Carrier (Technische Universität)
Feb 09, 2025
Reflecting upon the Alphafold as the recent recipient of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize in Chemistry, this post examines the role of artificial intelligence and new ways of 'doing science' aligned toward gamification, contests and awards.

Reimagining Disease Modelling and Outbreak Analysis: A Report on the "Critical Social Science Approaches to Epidemic Intelligence" Workshop

Rachel Yang
Jan 20, 2025
In this post, Rachel Yang reports on the "Critical Social Science Approaches to Epidemic Intelligence" workshop held at the University of Sydney on 21 and 22 March 2024.

Technology, health, and gender: contributions from and with Feminist STS

Mariana Pitta Lima
Dec 30, 2024
In this post, Mariana Pitta Lima discusses contributions from and with feminist STS from the South, drawing on a recently published chapter on technologies, health, and gender based on fieldwork in Brazil.

Changing toolkits in sustainability research – a perspective on transformative and transforming methods

Anja Klein, Catharina Lüder, Britta Acksel
Dec 23, 2024
In this post, Anja Klein, Catharina Lüder and Britta Acksel consider what it is that research methods in sustainability science seek to "transform" and how those methods might themselves be transformed along the way

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.

IEEE Pre-, Post-, or Doctoral Fellowship in Technoscience History

Nov 04, 2024
The IEEE Life Members Fellowship in the History of Electrical and Computing Technology supports either one year of full-time graduate work in the history of electrical science and technology at a college or university of recognized standing, or up to one year of post-doctoral research for a scholar in this field who has received his or her Ph.D. within the past three years. The stipend is $25,000 with a research budget of up to $3,000. The Fellow is selected on the basis of the candidate's poten...

CfP | Science as Culture Special Issue: Colonial Relations in Modern Techno-Securitisation

Nov 11, 2024
‘Security’ has become an increasingly dominant frame in recent decades, linking issues such as climate, biodiversity, borders, energy, food and military activities. Ever-more societal issues have been framed as security problems, even as existential threats. These frames seek to justify pre-emptive management through technoscientific expert systems, imagining control over everything and fostering an authoritarian culture. This SaC special issue will explore linkages among three dynam...

CfP | Peer Review in the Age of Large Language Models Workshop

Jan 13, 2025
‘Peer Review in the Age of Large Language Models’ is an interdisciplinary workshop taking place on 14th May 2025 at the University of Bath.
With the emergence of large language models (LLMs), some scholars have begun to experiment with the use of these tools in various academic tasks, including peer review. Recent studies have suggested LLMs could play some legitimate role in peer review processes. However, significant concerns have been raised about potential biases; violations ...

Hybrid Participation

Jan 24, 2025
An important update to the planning for the 4S Meeting in Seattle in September. In a change of course, we are planning to enable hybrid participation. This meeting will be predominantly in person, but with hybrid set-up to enable online participation as well. Submissions to the conference are due one week from today, on Friday January 31st: https://www.4sonline.org/meeting.php
 
All best,
Anne
4S President