STS-Austria Conference 2023
Digging Where We Stand: Activism, Community and the Politics of STS
Location: Vienna
Date: November 27-29
Activism and new forms of political organizing are (once again) gaining traction outside and inside of academia. This is happening alongside calls for more participation in and for the democratization of science. The intensification of current crises and the disruptive potential of technoscientific capitalism call for long overdue transformations of the socio-material relations that science and technology are part of. Postcolonial and feminist critiques of the normative power and epistemic violence in science and technology have been renewed in recent years and push for an ethico-onto-epistemology that urges researchers to reflect their positionality and take a stand. Precarious working conditions in academia intensify the search for agency and clout of critical research and engagement.
This is the time for STS to revisit its relation to activism and engagement, its own community standards and positioning within the labor struggles of the wider academy. What are our standards of and visions for engagement? Where do we as STS researchers draw the boundaries of engagement and what alliances do we enter? How are we multiple and (how) should we join forces nonetheless?
The full cfp can be found here.
We cordially invite you to submit abstracts of max. 300 words to office@sts-austria.org by September 11, 2023.