Linguists first used the term backchannel to refer to the spontaneous responses and signals that provide interactivity to what is only apparently a one-way communication. Social media users have adopted the term to refer to the unofficial, multi-directional online conversation that parallels formal academic exchange at a lecture or conference. The Backchannels blog is intended to have a similar relationship to scholarly discourse in STS. It provides an outlet for alternative-format scholarly communications, publishing shorter, timelier, media-rich communiques of interest to the global STS community. The editors welcome proposed contributions.
May 6 2024
In the second of a two-part Backchannels post, Amanda Domingues and Rogelio Scott-Insua interview Professor Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Alice Drysdale Sheffield Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. They continue the conversation on narratives within the history of science that apply categories originally conceptualized in Europe and North America to understand events that transpired across the globe.
Apr 28 2024
Michaela Clark explores the UCT DoS Collection of clinical photographs, produced at South Africa’s first medical school. She submits that its photographic contents testify to connections between historical actors and institutions. Following the collection outside the settler-colonial medical archive offers insight into how clinical photography crossed scientific and lay terrains, and continues to bridge local and global space and time.
Apr 22 2024
In this reflection based on fieldwork in Donegal, Ireland, Kaitlyn Rabach shows how a defective concrete disaster is changing the ways homeowners and activists demand governmental policies be driven by expertise and evidence-backed science.
Mar 25 2024
Jumping spider "song and dance" can serve as a generative entry point for staging broader disruptions in the misogyny and cisheterosexism that have long underwritten scientific studies of animal behavior.
Apr 15 2024
Scuba diver and anthropologist Jakkrit Sangkhamanee explores the multispecies, symbiotic relationships in coral reefs, drawing parallels to human-technology interactions and emphasizing the need for ecological awareness in the Anthropocene era.
Apr 1 2024
In the first of a two-part Backchannels post, Amanda Domingues and Rogelio Scott-Insua interview Professor Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Alice Drysdale Sheffield Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. They discuss his research on the formative role of "Latin America" in US colonial history and the history of "Western" modernity as a whole.
Mar 20 2024
The global discourse on diseases and treatment is dominated by the positivistic approach of biomedicine, leaving little room for dialogue with other medical epistemes of the body. This post discusses the clinical approach of Ayurveda system of medicine in treating what is known as cancer today.
Mar 11 2024
In this exceptional collaboration, seven participants of the Posthuman Symbiosis Masterclass take us through a collective effort of (un)learning the ways we produce knowledge.
Mar 4 2024
The following piece offers a brief cautionary tale on how the inclusion of full-time programs and increased access to the public high education system in Brazil do not necessarily create new opportunities for social mobility but can rather reinforce old structures that perpetuate inequalities.
Feb 26 2024
Ludovico Rella (Durham University) reports on the 'Making Data, Making Worlds' workshop conducted in September 2023, hosted by the Royal Geographical Society in London. This report engages with the processes of world-making associated with Artificial Intelligence algorithms and large-scale simulation environments, refracted through the critical and analytic lens of the 'generative turn' that produces new articulations between algorithms, simulations, predictive modeling based on ‘real data...