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Click to Submit a Proposal or Abstract
Call for Paper Abstracts and Other Proposals is NOW OPEN:
March 3–April 30, 2026
Notification of Acceptance: May 29, 2026
4S 2026 Conference: October 7-10, 2026
The Conference will primarily be in person, but there is also a hybrid option to enable online participation for those who can’t make it to Toronto.
Conference Theme: TechnoPower • Technoscientific Futures
We invite submissions of paper abstracts, closed panels, roundtables, Making & Doing sessions, and meetups that align with the conference theme.
The Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), on its 50th anniversary calls for presentations, panels, and adjacent gatherings that engage our theme of TechnoPower. Science, technology, and innovation are not neutral. We understand them as socially, culturally, and economically constructed and deeply entangled with specific forms of technoscientific power. At this critical juncture, our task is not only to critique and demystify technoscience but also transform how others perceive and engage with technoscience. From the reinforcement of harmful value(s) systems to the assetization of knowledge and the erosion of ecological and social justice, a specifically technoscientific capitalism has embedded market logics and elite control into our knowledge institutions, innovation choices, and into technological change itself. Yet, as we also know so well, technoscience is always contested, and STS offers plural and grounded alternatives to understanding and reframing technoscience, from citizen science to community engagement in innovation to Indigenous knowledge. A key challenge now is to accelerate our interventions into public, policy, and political debate, to shift technoscientific futures away from the dictates of a wealthy few towards a technoscience that fosters collective wellbeing, justice, and sustainability.
Participation guidelines
There are many ways to participate in the 4S 2026 conference: participating in Open Panels, organizing or participating in Closed Panels, commenting on papers, presenting in a Making & Doing session or in the SLSA streams, or participating in a roundtable or meetup session.
In order to enable many people’s participation, each participant will be limited to one role as a presenter and two additional non-presenter roles at the conference. Non-presenter roles include organizing or chairing a session, being a discussant in a session, organizing or participating in roundtables, and participating in a Making & Doing session. For those presenting at 4S for the first time, it is worth noting the Society's ethos on co-authored papers. By discouraging more well-known authors from presenting multiple co-authored papers, we hope to encourage and provide the opportunity for other co-authors to take that presenting role, as a way to foster more inclusive engagement.
Closed Panels
We invite submissions for Closed Panels that align with the conference theme of TechnoPower • Technoscientific Futures. We are interested in proposals that expand our understanding of relations of science and technology and political-economic forces. We seek critical reflection but also speculations, ongoing experiments, and practices that encourage the possibility of building new solidarities. In that sense, we welcome theoretical analyses from different paradigms as well as empirical and historical studies, in the long and fruitful tradition of 4S.
Organizing a Closed Panel
A panel proposal must contain a minimum of three papers and a maximum of six interventions (e.g. 5 papers plus 1 discussant) in a 100-minute session. A panel may cover more than one session and up to a maximum of four. The composition of panels is ultimately determined by the Program Committee. If your proposal contains fewer than five papers, the Committee may (in consultation with you) allocate additional papers to your panel to optimize scheduling and participation. If the panel drops below three papers, the Program Committee will rearrange the remaining papers to other open panels.
The Program Committee will consider proposals for a limited number of Author meets Critics panels. To the extent possible, Author meets Critics panels should discuss two books per panel. The panel should treat both books together and should reflect the diversity of work and scholarship in the STS field. We suggest that Critics panels discuss recently awarded books or books whose contributions are considered substantive or original. Please submit the Author meets Critics proposals as Closed Panels.
For an overview of the multi-step submission process for a closed panel, please review this walk-through video or review this text and screenshot based guide.
Open Panels
Submissions to open panels should be presented in the form of abstracts of up to 250 words. For traditional papers, your abstract should include a brief description of the main arguments, methods and contributions to STS. For submissions of experimental formats of knowledge expression to Combined Format panels, your abstract should include a brief description of your contribution in relation to the Open Panel description and to STS. For both traditional papers and experimental formats of knowledge expression, your abstract should clearly state how your submission connects to the open panel as well as the broader conference theme.
When submitting your abstract, you will be asked to designate one or more areas of STS research, your submissions type (traditional paper or experimental format), and add keywords. In addition, you will select up to two accepted open panels to host your contribution. In this way, we reinforce the possibility of your submission being placed in thematically connected sessions, thus facilitating networking and scholarly discussion.
View descriptions of the 2026 Open Panels.
For an overview of the multi-step submission process, please review this walk-through video for submissions to open panels.
Making & Doing
The Making & Doing (M&D) Program at the 4S conference invites presentations of research involving participatory, speculative, reflexive, aesthetic, inventive, and other unconventional approaches to the study of science, technology, and society, as well as projects that experiment with modes of producing, sharing, and reconfiguring knowledge. The M&D Program is particularly interested in presentations that enact rather than describe their contributions.
Proposals should address the relevance of the project to the 2026 theme of TechnoPower • Technoscientific Futures, or to STS scholarship more broadly. Proposals will be asked to identify the most suitable of the four types of M&D presentations (view descriptions for 2026 Making & Doing here) that can be supported at the Sheraton hotel in downtown Toronto: (1) interactive presentations in the exhibition hall, (2) workshops, (3) non-interactive displays, and (4) films. Proposals should address the relevance of the project to the 2026 theme of TechnoPower • Technoscientific Futures, or to STS scholarship more broadly.
Submissions to Making & Doing should include:
— a title
— an abstract of up to 250 words
— the category most suitable of your presentation (1–4, above)
— the duration of your contribution (i.e., how much time a visitor would need to interact with your presentation)
— a spatial and technical requirements paragraph of up to 100 words
— a representative high quality image
— modality of the presentation (in-person/online)
Participation in the Making and Doing event does not count toward limits on conference participation described elsewhere. Find galleries of past Making & Doing exhibitions here.
For an overview of the multi-step submission process, please review this walk-through video for Making & Doing submissions.
SLSA Streams
From October 8-10, 4S is pleased to welcome and host the Society for Literature, Science & the Arts (SLSA), for a series of integrated streams. This will be the 39th meeting of the SLSA in North America, an event that welcomes radically interdisciplinary interventions from colleagues in the sciences, engineering, technology, computer science, medicine, the social sciences, the humanities, the arts, and independent scholars and artists.
Scholars and artists are invited to submit abstracts and panel proposals to one of four broad SLSA Streams: 1) Technology; 2) Ecologies; 3) Play; 4) Arts & Literature. The deadline is April 30, 2026. Submissions must be made by following the 4S 2026 Conference Submissions platform, via the SLSA 2026 Submissions where you can select one SLSA Stream from the aforementioned streams. A detailed description of each stream appears on the full SLSA Toronto 2026 Call for Papers, available on the SLSA Website. To view previous SLSA programs for context, visit the SLSA Conference Archive. Artists who are interested in presenting their work at the conference are encouraged to submit projects to the 4S Making and Doing program.
All accepted presenters must be SLSA Members in good standing by August 31, 2026 or they will be removed from the conference program. Additional deadlines for SLSA Streams will follow the same schedule as the 4S 2026 Key Dates.
Note: Conference participants are asked to choose between submitting an abstract for either the SLSA Stream or for a regular 4S panel. From the 4S Organizers:
To enable many people’s participation, the conference chairs will follow the following guideline. Each participant will be limited to one role as a presenter and two additional non-presenter roles at the conference. Non-presenter roles include organizing or chairing a session, being a discussant in a session, organizing or participating in roundtables, and participating in a Making & Doing session. For those presenting at 4S for the first time, it is worth noting the Society's ethos on co-authored papers. By discouraging more well-known authors from presenting multiple co-authored papers, we hope to encourage and provide the opportunity for other co-authors to take that presenting role, as a way to foster more inclusive engagement.
Questions can be submitted to SLSA Toronto site organizers, Marcel O’Gorman (marcel@uwaterloo.ca) and David Cecchetto (dcecchet@yorku.ca).
Roundtables
We invite the submission of roundtables that do not require formal papers and take a more conversational format.
Roundtable proposals require at least 1 organizer and 2 presenters, as well as the title and abstract (up to 250 words) of the Roundtable. Participants do not need to submit paper titles and abstracts.
Due to extremely limited space, we may not be able to accommodate all proposals.
Meetups
4S conferences regularly host less formal social meetups or meetings around research communities, publishing communities, shared approaches (such as the annual feminist or decolonial STS meet ups), research topics, or regional foci.
Please submit a short (up to 200 words) description of your meetup. These descriptions are for the organizing committee's information, and will not appear in the conference program.
Most meetups will be allocated 1-hour slots, but we will accept a limited number of requests for longer sessions. Please indicate if you would like to request a longer session. You may also make requests for catering for meetups.
Submission and meeting questions can be directed to meeting@4sonline.org.
Due to extremely limited space, we may not be able to accommodate all proposals.