[STS-Africa] Global STS: Exploring Transnational Dimensions of Science, Technology, and Society

[Luisa Reis de Castro]

Call for Papers

In marking the 10th Anniversary of the School of Humanities and Social
Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, the Humanities, Science,
and Society Research Cluster (HSS at HSS) will hold an international
conference entitled Global STS: Exploring Transnational Dimensions of
Science, Technology, and Society on 14 and 15 March 2014 at the NTU
campus in Singapore.

For the past forty years, the field of Science, Technology, and
Society (STS) has significantly contributed to our understanding of
how science and technology mutually interact with society. Numerous
concepts, frameworks, and theories have been developed by STS scholars
but only a few touch upon the transnational dimensions of scientific
production and technological development. The production system of
science and technology has expanded beyond nation-state borders and
implications and repercussions of technoscientific risk are rapidly
spreading at the global scale. The conference aims to take STS across
new frontiers where the global features of science and technology that
increasingly shape the future of society in the 21st century are
critically examined. Can we build better explanations to understand
rapid developments of science and technology in the globalized
society? How have transnational networks of scientific systems
transformed epistemological contents and practices of science? How
should the notion of technological politics be applied in diverse
political regimes across the globe? These questions provide the
grounds for exploring what we might consider as “Global STS”.

The conference aims to provide a venue for an interdisciplinary
interaction between sociologists, historians, anthropologist,
philosophers, and political scientists to examine how precisely
globalization shifts the structures and cultures of technoscientific
production and how transnationalization of technoscience produce
far-reaching implications on the globalized society in terms of the
application and commercialization of scientific knowledge and
technical systems. As today's world is marked by the rise of Asia as a
new center of technoscience production, we also invite STS researchers
to probe the future development of STS looking into Asia's influences
on global technoscientific enterprises in the 21st century. As an
academic event, the conference seeks to extend the existing STS
scholarship in exploring new territories to unpack
science-technology-society relations, taking into account the
histories, cultures, and institutions that mark the global
contestation of technoscience.  Topics of interest include but not
limited to:

·         Transnational Technoscience
·         Sustainability and Global Development
·         Risk and Disaster
·         New Media and Game Studies
·         Large-scale Infrastructures
·         Gender and Technoscience
·         Cities and Urban Systems
·         Future Energy
·         Health and Biomedicine
·         Governance and Institutions

Selected conference papers will be collected and published in an
edited volume or a special issue for international circulation.

Keynote Speaker
Wiebe E. Bijker is professor of Technology & Society at the University
of Maastricht. Professor Bijker is the author of “Of Bicycles,
Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change” and a
co-editor of influential volumes such as “The Social Construction of
Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of
Technology”, “Shaping Technology/ Building Society. Studies in
Sociotechnical Change”, and “Paradox of Scientific Authority: the Role
of Scientific Advice in Democracies”. He is former president of the
Society for Social Studies of Science and the recipient of the 2012
Leonardo da Vince Medal awarded by the Society for the History of
Technology.

Accommodations and Travel Subsidies
Participants will be provided with accommodation at Nanyang Executive
Center (this does not apply to Singapore-based participants). Partial
travel subsidies are offered to graduate students and participants
from non-OECD countries. Please note that only one person for each
paper is to be accommodated.

Submissions and Deadline
To participate in the conference, please write an abstract of 300
words using the template available here: http://bit.ly/absform and
send it to STSCon... at ntu.edu.sg by 15 January 2014. Accepted abstracts
will be notified by 1 February 2014.  For further information, please
check the conference website at http://Global-STS.org or contact
Sulfikar Amir at sulf... at ntu.edu.sg.