Summary
On 25 June 2024, with the support of the EASST Network Fund and the University College Dublin Centre for Digital Policy, scholars from Ireland and elsewhere participated in a day-long hybrid (un)conference: Creating an Irish Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Community. This event, the first of its kind to take place in Ireland, brought together researchers from across the island and two keynote speakers, Professor Cassidy Sugimoto of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech, USA) and Professor Rob Kitchin of Maynooth University (Ireland) while also welcoming other scholars who are interested in the Irish STS context. The objective was to bring together researchers in Ireland who use critical and interpretive approaches to science, technology, and society.
Origins of the Event
When Kalpana interviewed at University College Dublin in 2011, one of her questions to the interview panel was to ask where the STS researchers were. One of the interviewers said they were all over – in the business schools, sociology, geography, and elsewhere. This turned out to be the case. Over time, she met many other researchers with interests in STS, including Christo Jacob, a PhD student in the School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin and co-organizer of the event. While Christo is new to STS and STS literature, he recognized that his PhD research on LGBTQ+ communities in South India and online communication and hate speech would benefit from being more familiar with STS literature and methodologies and thus wanted to learn more.
And why an unconference? After some discussion, we decided that it would be preferable, given the newness of this event, to give our participants more opportunity to discuss and reflect, and to figure out what to talk about. To anchor the event, we invited two keynote speakers to help us set the stage – one from Ireland (a geographer who did not see himself as “doing STS” and one speaker from the United States who sees her work as drawing on and contributing to STS, but also other areas such as science policy).
We had to be somewhat creative in our approach to spreading the word of our event and interest since we had no listserv or other way to advertise. We relied on social media, personal contacts, and colleagues to spread the word of our event. We drew scientists, sociologists, media and communication researchers, information studies scholars, researchers from business schools. The event was held on June 25 at the Museum of Literature of Ireland, a beautiful Georgian era building in the heart of Dublin. We had thirty attendees in person and eight online. We asked registrants to indicate areas of interest in STS and their knowledge of STS literature to help us organize the event.
We structured the event to have opening remarks by Kalpana, our two keynotes, a panel consisting of the keynote speakers and Kalpana, and self-organized breakout sections with a final wrap-up. The breakout sections were loosely organized around themes of interest that researchers indicated in their registration, including but not limited to STS collaboration with other disciplines, science communication, methods for STS, feminist and decolonial STS, building community, and creating an STS identity in Ireland.
The first keynote speaker, Professor Rob Kitchin, is a professor at Maynooth University’s Social Sciences Institute. His research interests encompass a wide range of topics, including software, big data, smart cities, Internet and cyberspace, cartographic theory, mapping and dashboards, data infrastructures and practices, as well as spatial theory and geographic methods. Professor Kitchin spoke about his own experiences in Ireland and elsewhere as an urban geographer and advisor to funding agencies and policymakers. The second speaker, Professor Cassidy Sugimoto, holds the position of Professor and is the Tom and Marie Patton School Chair in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests encompass Ethics and Philosophy of Science and Technology, History of Technology/Engineering and Society, Science and Engineering Organisations, Education, Careers and Workforce, and Science and Technology Studies. Her research covers themes related to gender, education policy, inequality, inequity, social justice, and policy analysis. Her talk focused on how and where STS diverges, historically and disciplinarily, from cognate disciplines (such as science studies and science policy) and what the implications of those divergences and convergences are for current topics like disinformation, artificial intelligence, and inequality in science and technology.
The conversations were wide-ranging. While many of the early career researchers wanted to network to learn more about STS methods, literature, topics, and conferences, more senior researchers spoke about the strategic directions STS would need to take in the Irish context and potential integration with science policy, research funding, and international collaborations. At the end of the day, the participants came back together to reflect on how such a network could be continued, where resources could be found, and expanding the scope and reach.
Ireland, STS, and the (Un)Conference
Research in Ireland is not new (it has often been nicknamed the land of “saints and scholars”), but institutionalized research and funding policy is. Until the late 1990s, Ireland did not have a research funding body. In 1998, the introduction of the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI) was established, followed by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS). In 2001, the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) was established, along with Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), which arose out of a Technology Foresight exercise in the 1990s designed to predict the needs of industrial development (O ́Foghlu, 2010). SFI supported basic research, particularly in the areas of information and communication technology and biotechnology.
The Expert Group on Future Skills Needs (EGFSN) in its report published in July 2001 commended the establishment of these sources of research funding. They recommended that Ireland’s national research policy should orient itself towards achieving a substantial increase in the output of doctorates, particularly in science, engineering and technology, and facilitating the movement of international researchers into Ireland. Research policy and strategy documents during the 1990s and 2000s speak to the role of research and innovation in contributing to the Knowledge Economy or Knowledge Society as well as Ireland’s economic boom, known as the “Celtic Tiger”. However, the year 2008, with the worldwide global financial crash and dramatic reversal of growth in Ireland, saw massive impacts for all sectors of the economy – including the first public sector pay cuts in the Eurozone (O ́Foghlu, 2010).
Since then, Ireland has regained many of its former wins with respect to higher education and research funding, as well as other sectors of the economy. The entrenchment of pharmaceutical and Big Tech companies (headquartered in Ireland for its favorable tax status), Foreign Direct Investment, a massive increase in international students, the influx of European research funding, and other factors have significantly reshaped the scientific and research landscape of Ireland.
This brief history of research policy in Ireland suggests that while Ireland has often looked to science and technology innovation to spur investment and growth (and continues to do so), there has been less space for critical evaluation and engagement – in other words, the very things that STS does well.
To be sure, there have been sociologists, geographers, media scholars, economists, and others who have examined the many intersections of research policy with other dimensions of society. However, the depth and breadth of approaches that STS internationally has given us over the last decades remain scattered across institutions, disciplines, and research centers. Often such work is at odds with Irish research policy (and the funding that flows from it) which still promotes an approach that does not critique too closely the technologically deterministic, and neoliberal narrative of scientific and technological progress extant in Ireland. Even as Ireland has turned to science and technology to develop its economic base, there has been little space for critical engagement. While resources are available towards public understanding of science, STEAM initiatives, and similar projects, they remain embedded in a pre-determined linear narrative of progress.
In short, while there are many researchers doing STS work, there is no collective STS identity, no STS undergraduate or graduate training schools or formal programs, or an Irish national society. Researchers are dispersed in numerous disciplines: information studies, business, law, computer science, sociology, geography, and education, to name a few. Some affiliate their work with STS, many do not. As a result, these individuals have no opportunity to form new collaborations that can be leveraged to participate in broader research conversations in Europe and elsewhere. The trend throughout Europe has been to develop similar regional or national networks of STS scholars that can leverage international funding and other schemes (Italy, Spain, and Belgium have all developed similar networks). Furthermore, the future of Irish research policy and funding is in flux as the two main funding agencies, Science Foundation Ireland and the Irish Research Council, are on track to be merged into one. The details of that merger are likely to have significant import for social science and humanistic research. And of course, as everywhere, the permeation of the digital into our work, organizations, and lives calls for new interventions.
Conclusion
Since the 1960s, there has been interest in seeing science (then technology, broadly writ) as a social phenomenon, situated in historical and social contexts. Many of these interests were found in schools of history, anthropology, politics, sociology then later in the arts, humanities, geography, computing, and information studies. Methodological and theoretical approaches are also drawn from these and other fields. STS could help build bridges among and between disciplines and sectors. However, several attendees suggested that there may be other ways to draw researchers and allies together.
STS approaches science and technology not as arising from “nature” but as complex interactions of power, political forces, history, institutions, and beyond. Wicked problems demand complex solutions and STS researchers and practitioners have brought their tools to help us explore and solve them.
Ireland is an old country but a young nation. As Professor Kitchin noted, it was the poorest country in Europe and now is one of the wealthiest. It has a highly educated workforce, technological ambitions, a geographical location that straddles Europe and North America, and has experienced net immigration over the last decade. It provides an interesting “laboratory” for the STS researcher and educator for these and other reasons, and with time and effort and resources, we will see STS emerging as a community and network.
References
Boden, M., & Fitzgibbon, M. (1995). Evaluation of science and technology policy in Ireland. Research Evaluation, 5(1), 55-62.
Bonetta, L., 2008. Celtic Strength: Science in Ireland. Science, 322(5902), pp.773-778.
Cullina, E., Harold, J. and McHale, J., 2021. Irish science policy: a case study in evidence-based policy design for small open economies. In Policy Analysis in Ireland (pp. 235-248). Policy Press.
Lin, G.T.R., Chang, Y.H. and Shen, Y.C., 2010. Innovation policy analysis and learning: Comparing Ireland and Taiwan. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 22(7-8), pp.731-762.
Mercille, J., Murphy, E., 2015. Ideological Power and the Response to the Crash. Deepening Neoliberalism, Austerity, and Crisis: Europe’s Treasure Ireland, pp.70-89.
O ́ Foghlu ́, M. (2010) Science, Engineering and Technology Research Funding Policy in Ireland 1995-2008: A Policy Document Analysis. dissertation.
Crawley, G.M. and O’Sullivan, E., 2006. The ‘Celtic Tiger’ and a knowledge economy. Industry and Higher Education, 20(4), pp.225-229.
Author biography
Kalpana Shankar is a Professor of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin. Her research and teaching focus on the research ecosystem itself, open data, and data archives and sharing, as well as other work on research evaluation and peer review. She has been involved with the STS community since she was a PhD student at the University of California, Los Angeles.
