Less than a year for the next EASST/4S joint conference!
The call for tracks has been a real success. The deadline for open track submissions is over and the link to the submission system has been removed. The organization has received 179 proposals. After the work of the Scientific Committee 100 tracks have been accepted, a few of them with suggestions. Besides that, 12 more tracks have ben accepted with alternative formats.
Conference Abstracts Submissions
The call for abstracts is almost ready. It will appear very soon in the web of the conference (http://www.sts2016bcn.org). There you will find the details of the procedure to follow and the list of tracks accepted.
For the Joint EASST/4Sconference 2016 we encourage to propose papers that broadly address the meeting’s theme ‘Science and Technology by Other Means’.
Abstracts can be submitted to open tracks, but you are also able to submit closed session proposals. These are proposed sessions submitted with a number of papers with a shared focus. Session proposals should be based on the assumption of one-and-half hour time slots with fifteen minutes per presentation. A typical session may have four papers, one discussant, and open discussion slot. The program chair may assign additional papers to proposed sessions to meet the typical session composition. The call for paper abstracts will include instructions on the way to submit such closed sessions.
We welcome your participation.
Conference Motto
Some decades ago several STS scholars defended that science and technology could be considered as ‘politics by other means’. Many years have gone through, and STS researchers are increasingly turning their attention towards proposals and experiences where science and technology are increasingly performed ‘by other means’: in a variety of exploratory activities that include the articulation of collectives that do not fit with the traditional actors in science and technology, or in ways that problematize the established value systems involved in the production of knowledge and technologies –e.g. fostering the creation of open science, DIY design and commons-based p2p projects, citizen science and maker communities, feminist and environmentalist technoscience projects, and many other platforms seeking to create alternatives to public/private technoscientific arrangements.
Emerging science and technology practices show how public and private actors are being re-assembled along routes that do not follow once established divides: science and technology are increasingly produced by private not-for-profit actors, such as CSOs, patient organizations and new citizens’ collectives, whilst traditional public institutions once entrusted with the mission of ‘producing’ science and technology for the common good, like universities and research centers, are being transformed into for-profit organizations subjected to productivity bonus, austerity measures and new public management accounting principles. These emerging and consolidating phenomena destabilise and re-signify existing public and private spaces, whilst generating new ones. In turn, new technoscientific communities and unexpected political mobilizations are ongoingly opening up, incessantly engendering other contested options, as well as forging routes to explore more democratic and hospitable futures in the times of care, housing, food, financial and environmental crisis.
The joint 2016 4S/EASST conference in Barcelona will be an opportunity to share reflections, ideas, findings and projects on a variety of aspects characterizing these alternative ways to do science and technology: (a) such as the fact that, for instance, all of these transformations usually take place in blurred everyday spaces and not in those enclosed established spaces for science and technology development, such as laboratories or industrial R&D departments; (b) or, in a similar way, the fact that research and innovation processes are increasingly organized in networked, horizontal assemblages where the traditional hierarchies in science are put into question and where science and technology are being co-produced by different actors in different, sometimes antagonistic, ways; (c) and, finally, the fact that traditional boundaries between the public and the private are no longer confined to state and for-profit actors, care practices taking a preeminent presence in most of these everyday situations.
Important Dates
2016, February 21: Deadline for abstract submissions to open tracks and for closed sessions proposals
2016, March 13: Convenors’ deadline for abstracts acceptances/rejections/relocations;
2016, April 17: Communication of acceptance/rejection of abstracts to authors, ran king/ordering and opening of online registrations;
2016, May 9: First draft of the organization of each thematic session;
2016, June 1: Final draft of the organization of each thematic session (to be sent by the convenors to the Scientific and Local Committee);
2016, June 15: Early registrations deadline;
2016, July 1: All presenters must register to be included in the program. For papers with more than one author, one presenter must register to be included in the final program.
2016, July 15: Publication on the website of the final Conference program.
2016, July 30: Closing of online registration.
Contacts for further information
You can email any enquiries related to the track submission to program@sts2016bcn.org, for any other issue please contact to general@sts2016bcn.org
