Valeria Ramirez
I would bring a multicultural background and a blend of experience from both academia and industry. Currently, I am a postdoc at the University of Cambridge, focusing on research impact metrics, technology transfer, and university innovation. I completed my PhD in Paris (LISIS-IFRIS) last year and have been lecturer at UGE and SciecesPo. My interests, in the interface between different knowledge systems, translate into different perspectives on how STS can make a significant impact beyond academia. I am passionate about fostering interdisciplinary collaborations and building community partnerships, and I hope that my experience in bridging cultures, sectors, and disciplines will contribute to EASST’s mission of engaging STS with real-world challenges.
Sarah Rose Bieszczad
I’m the out-going PhD representative for the council. As I begin my post-PhD academic life, I want to continue to give back to the European STS community. As the PhD representative, I tried my best to give a voice to the concerns of not only PhDs but also to Early Career Researchers (ECRs), as I felt many of the concerns of PhDs, like precarity, also affect us long after our PhD contracts are up. This inclusion culminated in the creation of a new ECR representative on the council. I hope the community building that I strive for helps ECRs form connections in their time of most uncertainty and instability.
Regina Sipos
My name is Dr. Regina Sipos, and I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Technical University of Munich. I wrote my PhD thesis (summa cum laude) at the Technical University of Berlin about grassroots innovation in the Global South, filling a gap in STS on bottom-up, self-directed innovation by communities, often developing pathways by circumventing top-down strategies of development. My interest in this topic stems from 7 years of work at the United Nations, where I gained valuable insights into the makings of global policy.
Quentin Dufour
I have just been hired as a CNRS junior professor (tenure track professorship) at the University of Aix-Marseille, France. My work lies at the intersection of STS, the sociology of quantification, and Data Studies. I am interested in the political and ethical issues surrounding the reuse of health data. I focus on empirical cases of reuse in three distinct fields: epidemiology, genomics, and AI models for health.
Pouya Sepehr
I am Pouya Sepehr, currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the George Simmel Centre for Urban Studies, Department of European Ethnology at Humboldt University of Berlin. I am thrilled to put myself forward for the ECR position on the EASST Council, driven by a deep passion for shaping the future of STS in Europe. My academic journey has been firmly anchored in Europe, with both a PhD and MA in Science-Technology-Society from the University of Vienna, along with extensive professional and research experiences across various European contexts.
Nikolaus Pöchhacker
I am a postdoctoral researcher exploring digitalization phenomena on the intersection of AI, democracy, and law. In my work, which is mostly qualitative research, I bring various disciplinary perspectives together, including STS, media theory, computer science, and legal studies. Already early on in my academic career I have been introduced to the marvelous community of STS with its broad spectrum of perspectives, approaches, and practices – and call it my intellectual home ever since. I consider myself lucky to be part of such a welcoming and thriving community.
Maya Hey
I am a trans- and inter-disciplinary scholar interested in the ways that microbes shape and are shaped by science and society. With microbes as my analytical object of study, my work engages with themes such as the social construction of knowledge, infrastructures for collaboration, and taking a critical stance towards the hype of microbial innovations. For my PhD (funded by the government of Canada, completed 2021), I studied Japanese processes of fermentation by making ferments and doing the work firsthand. My own politics about pedagogy led me to co-found the community fff|food feminism fermentation, which brings scholarly, artistic, and activist perspectives into a shared learning space.
Jenny Tilsen
I am a British American STS scholar, currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the electrical and computer engineering department at Bucknell University. In this role, I conduct ethnographic research on how faculty and students work on socio technical problems during the engineering design process, implement practical approaches to grappling with ethical considerations in machine learning, and take up storytelling as a STS pedagogical method. My scholarship is focused on examining epistemic cultures, public pedagogies of STS, narrative construction of STS, and science fiction in technoscientific realities.
Alina Geampana
If elected as council member, I would bring both experience in organisational activities and enthusiasm for our field. For the past two years I have been a convenor of the British Sociological Association (BSA) STS study group; I have organised seminar series, conference panels, and plenary streams. I have been a regular attendee and panel organiser at STS conferences (including EASST, 4S, STS Italia) for more than 10 years. Given my interest in topics related to inequality, I would be keen to bring a focus on issues pertaining to diversity and inclusion. This interest also comes from my mentoring activities through the BSA and the Pro North East mentorship network. I believe interdisciplinarity and collegiality are essential to moving STS inquiry forward.
