PROCESS OF THE ELECTIONS
All EASST members have received three emails on 28th of January 2021, each with relevant details for the elections, first an explanatory message by the EASST server and subsequently two messages by the election server.
The election closes on 19th of February, 12 noon UTC.
Results are expected to be published here end of February 2021.
CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF EASST (2021-2024)
Horst, Maja
Over the years STS has developed into a community of concerned academic citizens with a plethora of interesting tales to tell. Some of us have disciplinary homes within STS departments, educational programmes and groups. Many other are living our academic lives in diverse constellations, where we might feel like visitors and sometimes even intruders. The European Association for the Study of Science and Technology serves a crucial role as a home for us all and a place where we can talk together in our shared languages about issues that concern us. Such a disciplinary home away from home is crucial for many of us – now more than ever as changing career structures and practices threaten to marginalize our scholarly practices. STS knowledge and methodologies can make crucial contributions to all of the most fundamental crises that we currently face in society – and we need to lend each other support to raise our voices and contribute to public solution making. As president, I will continue the excellent work of the previous president and council to 1) strengthen the public voices of STS in matters of concern, 2) create more opportunities and venues for us to support each other as a community (to learn, to engage and to have fun), and 3) to diversify further the membership of our society and facilitate inclusive networking.
Additional biographical information: Maja Horst is Professor of Responsible Technology at DTU Technical University of Denmark. Her research interests concern Public Engagement, Responsibility, Controversy, Futures, Governance, Democracy and Science Communication. Currently, she is working on innovation communication and AI, co-creation and controversies in wind energy and on science communication as an organizational activity. Previously she has written on, for instance, public controversies about biotechnology and stem cell research, the social responsibility of science, and science communication as culture. She has also been experimenting with interactive installations, for which she was awarded the Danish Science Minister’s Communication prize in 2009. She has served on the Danish Council of Research and Innovation Policy advising the Danish government and parliament. She is currently a member of the board of the Danish Independent Research Fund, and has previously held a full-time position as Head of Department for eight years. She chaired the organizing committee for the EASST/4S meeting in Copenhagen in 2012 and served on the EASST council between 2013-2016.
Nominations for EASST Council Elections (2021-2024)
Cozza, Michela
I am Senior Lecturer at the School of Business, Society and Engineering, Department of Organization and Management at Mälardalen University, in Sweden, since 2016.
My current teaching and research activities are in the areas of Science and Technology Studies and organization studies; in particular, my research projects have allowed me to develop the ability to work critically and collaboratively with scholars from other disciplines.
My publications reflect an interest in infrastructural studies and in applying an ecological understanding to the analysis of technology dense environments, with regard to health and welfare. I have recently completed my book titled Key Concepts in Science and Technology Studies, which will be out in January 2021 and published by Studentlitteratur.
I have been invited speaker and presented my work at a number of international conferences (among them, also the EASST Conference and other STS gatherings). I have also organized several workshops and conference-tracks. Currently, I am the chair of the fourth After-Method Conference in Organization Studies that should take place in June 2021. The conference is designed to gather scholars mainly from STS and organization studies.
In describing these activities, I point out my organizational competences and collaborative skills that may be useful within the scope of the EASST Council initiatives. I have lots of enthusiasm to transfer into my participation in the EASST Council activities. This nomination would help me to further characterize me as an STS scholar while actively contributing to the community I feel part of.
More information about me: https://michelacozza.wordpress.com
Domènech, Miquel
My name is Miquel Domènech. I’m associate professor at the Department of Social Psychology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. My research interests are mainly related to the study of care technologies (with a special focus on social robots at this moment) and citizen participation in technoscientific issues. I am currently a member of the EASST Council, which I joined in 2017 as an elected member, after a period as a co-opted member due to my involvement in the organization of the 4S/EASST 2016 joint conference in Barcelona. Due to this circumstance, during this period in the council I have been especially committed to issues related to the preparation and organization of meetings. Besides, I have some experience leading groups and organizing processes (in the past I was the Dean of my Faculty and I’m currently the Head of my Department) and I would like to put these skills at the service of our Association.
Klimburg-Witjes, Nina
I am a post-doc researcher at the STS department of the University of Vienna. I have an interdisciplinary background (STS, International Relations, and Development Studies) and am, broadly speaking, interested in the co-production of science, technology and global politics with a special focus on infrastructures of in/security in the making of Europe. My work explores the role of technological innovation and knowledge practices in securitization processes and asks how visions about sociotechnical vulnerabilities are co-produced with security devices and policies, from sensors to cyber security and space technologies. I always thought that STS has much to contribute to the current questions of (the politics of) in/security and moments of crisis and conflict, and that our field can provide much-needed critical and reflexive inputs to policy-making. As a member of the EASST Council, I would bring in my previous experiences from working with think tanks and policy-makers to further strengthen STS engagements with communities of practice and contribute to the visibility of STS in these areas.
As I enjoy teaching as much as research, the second area to which I would like to contribute as an EASST Council member is to foster interdisciplinary and collaborative teaching and learning and to develop innovative formats that allow exchanges among STS students and those who teach via EASST. I would also love to explore the opportunities for joint summer schools for early career scholars as part of the EASST conferences. For that, I would collaborate closely with the EASST student council.
Laser, Stefan
I am a postdoc at the Ruhr-University in Bochum, Germany. There I coordinate an STS research lab, the RUSTlab (Ruhr University Science & Technology Lab). This position, and my prior research experience, have introduced me to a broad network of STS scholars. In my PhD, Drawing on studies in Germany and India, I attuned to the global value chains of electronic waste through the lens of waste studies and actor-network methodologies. I enjoy working in an interdisciplinary, issue-oriented and cooperative way, and that is where I see the strengths of STS. But over the years, I have also become familiar with the hurdles experienced by STS researchers, especially by so-called “junior researchers.” It is important to live and appreciate the heterogeneity of STS; to be inclusive, to cherish the margins, to challenge the status quo. These are the concerns I want to highlight in the Council. I am committed to further consolidating STS perspectives. In Germany, I am engaged in the new initiative “stsing”, which advocates for a cross-departmental strengthening of doing STS in and with Germany. I helped to establish the association by co-organizing workshops and building a collaborative digital platform. I read STS primarily as an international, indeed transnational project, which is why I want to get more involved on the European level. In the Council, I want to specifically focus on the precarious working conditions across the continent, help redesign conferences and collaboration in the digital age, pushing free software while considering environmental issues.
Laurent, Brice
I am a researcher at the Center for the Sociology of Innovation of Mines ParisTech. My research explores the relationships between innovation and democracy, often through collaborative projects with colleagues from STS and/or practitioners. I have written books about emerging technologies and the democratic issues they raise (Democratic Experiments. Problematizing nanotechnology and democracy in Europe and the United States, MIT Press, 2017) and about the politics of regulating technical objects (Labelling the economy. The politics of qualification in contemporary markets, co-edited with Alexandre Mallard, Palgrave 2020; European Objects. The troubled dreams of harmonization, forthcoming at the MIT Press). I pursue the analysis of the political dimensions of technological projects in my current projects about experiments as ways of governing innovation, and in collaborative works about the extractive industry.
I am convinced that STS has a crucial role to play to make sense of the current crises that democracies face, be they related to the legitimacy of public expertise, the ambivalent possibilities for public participation offered by social media, or pressing environmental and health issues that cannot be ignored any more. If elected to the EASST council, I would work to ensure that STS contributes to the academic and public debates about these important topics. STS gathers academics with diverse disciplinary backgrounds, and many of them engage with policy-makers, activists and innovators interested in the politics of science and technology. This is an asset of our field, and a resource to meet today’s new challenges that I would be happy to promote as a EASST council member.
de Rijcke, Sarah
My name is Sarah de Rijcke, and I am professor and scientific director at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) of Leiden University. I am also co-chair of the Research on Research Institute (RoRI), an international consortium of research funders, academic institutions, and technologists who work together to improve research governance, culture and practice. My research focuses on interactions between science governance and knowledge creation in different fields. For instance, I currently lead an ERC-funded project on how evaluation shapes ocean science. I joined the EASST Council four years ago, and would be happy to serve a second term to further support the development of the Council and help new council members in their new roles. I am deeply committed to the inventive, political, and multivalent character of STS. I also sometimes worry about the future of our field. How are funding, publishing and evaluation criteria affecting the daily work of STS researchers? How are our PhD and postdoctoral colleagues across Europe affected by these pressures? Are various external constraints resulting in (too) incremental STS research? Do we have room to think big? Do we have time to go slow? As EASST Council member I will work to further develop initiatives for responsible evaluation practices, and for inclusive, non-essentialist notions of quality in and for the field.
Vostal, Filip
My name is Filip Vostal and I work as an Associate Researcher at the Center for Science, Technology, and Society Studies at the Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Science. I also teach STS introductory courses at Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University. In my research I am interested in temporalities of scientific knowledge production in molecular biophysics and photonics. I would be very interested to serve as EASST Council member and promote scholarly communication and exchange within and beyond STS. I would also be devoted to rendering STS “visible” to the general public, policy-makers and other relevant parties from natural and technical sciences. Given that STS in post-Soviet European space is not as consolidated as in other Western countries (yet there are many STS researchers in this region), no professional association connecting them as in, for example, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Nordic Countries, South America, North America, Turkey exists and I will be happy to also serve as “an STS ambassador” in this region and represent it in the EASST Council. I’ve recently served as a co-chair of the programme committee and local organizing committee of 4S/EASST 2020 “virPrague” meeting. It was an exceptional event – almost an experiment in its own right – due to Covid-19. From the feedback we received it was a highly successful virtual conference and I believe a “trendsetter” when it comes to future academic conferences across the social sciences. I believe I have necessary organizational and communicative skills to serve as council member and administer a range of its agendas (or agendas that will I will be tasked with) given my past and on-going experiences: e.g. as executive assistant of vice-president of the Czech Academy of Sciences, social lab manager at a Horizon 2020 project NewHoRRIzon and a co-founder and main administrator of The Accelerated Academy Network.
Wellner, Galit
My first EASST in Trento continues to carry with me the marvelous memories of a highly engaged community of scholars. My goal would be to preserve this spirit and advance cooperation between the members who are coming from a variety of subdisciplines and nationalities.
My name is Galit Wellner and am a senior lecturer/assistant professor at the NB School of Design and Adjunct Professor at Tel Aviv University, the multidisciplinary program in Humanities in Israel. I completed my PhD at the STS program at Bar-Ilan University and have been an active member at the postphenomenology group. In addition, am currently a member of the SHERPA Stakeholder Board, an EU project addressing AI ethics and policy.
Due to my extensive background in the high-tech industry, my research focuses on the intersections of postphenomenology and digital technologies, gender, and basic human faculties such as imagination and attention. I am interested in questions like: Can algorithms imagine? Why AI became gender-biased? How technologies co-shape human attention? What is the impact of augmented reality on its users and non-users? How do ICTs mediate the world for older adults with social frailty?
As a participant and leader of many international research projects, I am a true team player, encouraging and facilitating cooperation, fostering commitment, and above all – providing creative solutions. My vast experience in bridging academia and high-tech business and leading successful teams may be an asset to the position of member of the council. Thank you for your time to review my nomination.
Student representative for EASST Council Elections (2021-2024)
Besse, James
I am a PhD student in Science, Technology, and Innovation Studies at the University of Edinburgh. My research is on the implementation of the EU Settlement Scheme. The aim is to understand how digital technologies for migration control impact vulnerable groups and their broader implications for government. In addition to my PhD research, I research student surveillance at British universities. My PhD scholarship involves starting a project researching injustices arising from algorithmic systems, bringing STS researchers into closer conversation with lawyers.
I have a background in sociology and STS. I have spent much of my academic career studying the Holocaust, authoritarianism in Europe and America, and technology ethics. The broad aim of my research is to understand illiberal and authoritarian uses of science and technology and how academics and civil society can resist these applications.
Alongside academic work, I am a campaigner and researcher with the charity the3million, working on using STS research to advocate for people adversely impacted by Brexit. I hope to bring these skills and experiences to my work with the EASST Council, chiefly my focus on politics and advocacy. EASST members’ work has greatly influenced my academic career and makes me excited about our field’s future, so I hope to give back to the community as a Council member. By becoming a Council member, I hope to build connections and learn from the broader community of EASST, while bringing my focus on the political uses of science and technology to bear on discussions within the field.
Bieszczad, Sarah Rose
A PhD candidate at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University, I examine how deep sea ocean research is made valuable across contexts of evaluation. Having backgrounds in STS and Chemistry, I strongly believe STS’s richness lies in the diversity of knowledge(s) of its practitioners, coming together to create a vibrant, multifaceted community. My goal as student representative would be to continue fostering a better sense of community amongst PhD and early-career STS researchers from every background and part of Europe, striving to involve more underrepresented regions, like Southern and Eastern Europe.
We are all experts at bridging distances in corona times. I would use these capacities to foster a tighter knit community amongst PhD and early-career researchers, especially for those not situated at dedicated STS departments and/or who feel they need more engagement around their area of interest. Additionally, I would like to connect students to people who have already developed their career, highlighting less conventional career trajectories. Creating a community which is inclusive for everyone and all topics is very important to me and, if chosen, I will do my best to help maintain an open, engaging community for all PhD and early-career researchers. During my Master’s, I was involved in organizing an international symposium and helped found the Vienna STS student group INSIST. Currently I help organize CWTS’s weekly webinar series. As student representative, I hope to use these organizational skills in finding new ways for expanding and strengthening our community.
