Zusammenfassung
- Was Call For Papers — CfP STS-CH Conference 2025
- Wann to (Europe/Berlin / UTC100)
- Wo Zürich — Schweiz
- URL https://sts-ch.org/sts-ch-2025/
- Termin herunterladen iCal Datei herunterladen
Beschreibung
STS-CH Conference 2025
Holding things together?
Change, continuity, critique
Conference date: Sept 10 – 12, 2025
Venues in Zurich: University of Zurich, ETH, ZHdK
Keynotes by Brit Ross Winthereik and Hannah Rogers
The Call for Panels is open!
Please apply via this link.
Deadline: Jan 30, 25
Length of abstracts: 250 words
Suggested Panel Formats
Panels can take a variety of forms and run for 90 minutes, including but not limited to:
- Open panels with paper presentations followed by discussion
- Roundtable discussions for dynamic exchanges among scholars
- Workshops designed for collaborative exploration of specific ideas or methods
- Experimental formats that creatively engage participants (e.g., interactive sessions, performances, or installations)
- Closed panels, where panelists are pre-selected to foster focused discussion on a specific topic
These are suggested formats, and we encourage you to think creatively about the structure of your panel to best address the conference theme. If you have an idea for another format but you are unsure whether this would be a good fit, pls. reach out to us.
Conference committee: Anna Lytvynova, Bianca Vienni-Baptista, Christopher Salter, Gabriel Dorthe, Karmen Franinovic, Kathrin Eitel, Kiah Lian Rutz, Leila Girschweiler, Luke Stalley, Margo Boenig-Liptsin, Monika Dommann, Nadja Kempter, Philippe Sormani
Tentative timeline
Call for panels: open 20/12 > close 31/01
Mid-Jan> notification panel selection
Call for abstracts: open 28/02 > close 31/03
Mid-April> notification abstract selection
Holding things together?
Change, continuity, critique
In response to multiple crises and uncertain futures, nostalgic factions of contemporary society sometimes lament lost togetherness and a lack of shared knowledge about what happens, what should be done, and how to make sense of it all. Political upheavals, economic inequalities, ecological devastations, and climate threats indeed do seem to call for restored unity and a renewed pact of knowledge in society governed by relevance. Desirable futures are then imagined through collective efforts and revived interdisciplinary perspectives, including science and technology studies (STS). Through collaborative programs, public engagement, action research, transdisciplinary ventures, and the idea that “things could be otherwise,” STS as a multifaceted research field indeed has come to be built around the hope for a more just and inclusive world.
As its title question indicates, the STS-CH 2025 conference opens up a space to reflect on the field’s normative commitments and empirical inquiries. Does the intellectual and political project of a patient constructivist analysis still fit with a state of the world in which justice and emancipation feel like vague dreams? And, if not, what else does STS have in store? Is there something like a “common good” that STS should advocate? Conversely, and 20 years after a resounding paper by Bruno Latour, in which he asked if “critique had run out of steam”, is STS able and willing to account for conflicting situations between irreconcilable worldviews? What is the status of critique in today’s world? How do different research cultures within STS deal with critique? What can we learn from STS rooted in North America or Asia?
The constitutive relationships between knowledge cultures, technical practices, and forms of collective life have always been essential to STS. Collaborative forms of action, including transdisciplinarity, collaboration and public participation, all of which reinforce connections and sustain cohesion in both epistemic and political pursuits, have been studied extensively and practically engaged in. This conference welcomes contributions that prolong these canonical endeavors or imagine new ventures, while inviting reflexive perspectives. Does the emphasis on how things and people “hold together” properly account for contemporary conflicts, tensions, troubles, and uncertainties? Does the indispensable role of togetherness and hope in navigating tumultuous times need to be reframed and revised? And if so, how? Can the notion of a “common good” be dispensed with? If contemporary controversies are deemed to generate irreconcilable positions, what could be the contribution of STS to the deliberation and development of a collective journey toward a more cohesive and resilient world?
The STS-CH 2025 conference aims to approach togetherness from different perspectives that inquire into processes and practices of change, continuity, critique and potentially also the deliberate destruction of existing structures, social or sociotechnical. The goal is not to reach consensus on potential futures but to coproduce insights and support performative voices that imagine other liveable futures, connecting past and present experiences.
The conference will explore togetherness, transformation, inheritance and collectivity as means or devices, as well as discourses and practices, to navigate and recompose current societal worlds. We invite rethinking and reframing the following questions and lines of inquiry:
- How does the emphasis on things and people “holding together” relate to contemporary conflicts, tensions, troubles, and uncertainties?
- Does the indispensable role of togetherness and hope in navigating tumultuous times need to be reframed and revised? And if so, how?
- If contemporary controversies are deemed to foster irreconcilable positions, what could be the contribution of STS to the deliberation and development of a collective journey toward a more resilient world?
- What notion(s) of “common good” can or should STS contribute to articulate? What place do critical interventions have in the process? How might a renewed STS impetus – critical and constructive – look like?
- How can STS be developed and used, if not repurposed, in “inventive ways” so that its critique will last? How do “care” and “craft” fit into the picture?
- Did Latour overstate his case, conflating the public performance of polemic positions in mainstream media with the supposedly irreconcilable character of mutually exclusive worldviews per se?
- “Normative commitments,” “empirical basis,” “sociotechnical historicity” – if these are key concerns in and across current STS, how do they relate to each other, in and as any actual case? And what might be next?