May 13 2024
Natalie’s current book project is a critical history of the “invasive” European starling in the US. In this piece, she describes how one twentieth-century ornithologist characterizes the bird as communist, and how this narrative bolstered ornithology and later invasion biology.
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 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 6 2024
In this blog post, Katayoun Shafiee reflects on the case of the Dez Dam in Iran highlighting the role of cost-benefit analysis as a technology of governance.
Jan 23 2024
Dr Benedetta Catanzariti reflects on her experience as an STS scholar embedded in a core undergraduate computer science program at the University of Edinburgh. By attending to the "curricular infrastructures" of computer science education, we can chart new paths towards reflexive socio-technical knowledge production.