4S Mission

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

Latest 4S News

Book Announcement: AI, Sacred Violence, and War — The Case of Gaza by Chris Hables Gray

Published On: Feb 20, 2025

Chris Hables Gray’s book AI, Sacred Violence, and War — The Case of Gaza has just dropped. Open Access and Free! If you would like this very important book to remain on open access, support the Kickstarter by the start of Spring (March 20).
Chris is currently based in California but might be travelling to Europe and New York in the Spring. They are also happy to speak on this sad and very important topic. If you are an activist or academic, please feel free to contact Chris. Hono...

4S Palestine Forum | Contributions Call

Published On: Jul 30, 2024

The 4S Palestine Forum, launched earlier this year as the initial project of the Working Group on War and Genocide that was initiated at 4S Honolulu in 2023, is welcoming further contributions.

Please submit new short blog-style entries, as well as references to published work, syllabi, and other resources by writing info@4sonline.org.

View the Palestine Forum in its entirety here: https://www.4sonline.org/palestine_forum.php

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

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.

On Peer Review and Exchanges Unseen: Thank You to Our Reviewers 2023 and 2024

Kari Lancaster

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.

Consolidating the Strata: Geoscience and Underground Territory in South Korean Radioactive Waste Disposal

Sungeun Kim

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
In South Korea, the nation with the world's highest density of nuclear power plants, the disposal of high-level radioactive waste has become a pressing sociotechnical concern....

The Hidden Labor of Translation: Introduction to Special Issue

Clémence Pinel

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Translational medicine is concerned with hastening the application of basic scientific discoveries at the bench toward beneficial clinical outcomes at the bedside. Disrupting...

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...

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

Towards fairness in machine learning for dermatology: a skin tone representation disparities study

Celia Cintas
Feb 10, 2025
Images depicting dark skin tones are significantly under-represented in the educational materials used to teach primary care physicians and dermatologists to recognize skin diseases. In this piece, Celia Cintas introduces an open-source initiative to fight this issue.

And the winner is…Alphafold!

Alexandre Hocquet (Université de Lorraine and KHK Aachen), Frédéric Wieber (Université de Lorraine), Marcus Carrier (Technische Universität Berlin and KHK Aachen)
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.

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.

4S Palestine Forum | Contributions Call

Jul 30, 2024
The 4S Palestine Forum, launched earlier this year as the initial project of the Working Group on War and Genocide that was initiated at 4S Honolulu in 2023, is welcoming further contributions.

Please submit new short blog-style entries, as well as references to published work, syllabi, and other resources by writing info@4sonline.org.

View the Palestine Forum in its entirety here: https://www.4sonline.org/palestine_forum.php

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

Maastricht | Making and Design in Hospitals Postdoc

Jan 07, 2025
The Department of Society Studies is looking for a Postdoctoral Researcher to undertake exciting research about hospital practices. You will be part of a new team doing research helping to address the escalating issue of clinical waste. The project is called The Upcycled Clinic: A global ethnography of material creativity in contemporary medicine. The focus of this European Research Council funded project is on hospitals and clinics, which have become sites of disposability in recent years. Atte...

New Book | AI, Sacred Violence, and War — The Case of Gaza

Feb 10, 2025
This open access book is about how Israel is using Algorithmic Intelligence (AI) and other computer technology in military operations in the Gaza Strip to achieve goals based on ancient religious entitlements. Changes in Israel Defense Force (IDF) ethical codes and innovation policies have not led to victory, but have resulted in a wide range of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in a strategy focused on The Torture of Gaza, which includes ethnic cleansing and is approaching genocide.