INFO
Participation and delegate guidance
To maximise participation across the conference, the program committee will follow these guidelines in reviewing panel and paper submission:
- An individual may have each conference role only once during the conference:
- convene a Traditional Open Panel OR a Workshop OR a Roundtable OR a Combined Format Open Panel OR a Closed Panel once;
- present once in a Traditional Open Panel OR a Combined Format Open Panel OR a Closed Panel;
- present one contribution to the STS Making & Doing program;
- be a discussant once (either as a Roundtable participant or a discussant in a Workshop or a Traditional Open Panel or a Combined Format Open Panel or Closed Panel) OR be a chair once (in any of the formats).
- Please note that if a convenor decides to present in their own panel, regardless of the format, that counts as fulfilling the presenter role (as well as their convening role). These presentations must be included in the panel as panel submissions.
- It is assumed a convenor will chair their own panel, whether Combined Format, Traditional, Closed, Roundtable or Workshop, unless they name someone else in that role – but this is not counted as chairing once. It is part of the convening role.
- It is allowed to be a co-author on additional papers if you are not the one presenting them.
- Open Panel convenors will decide on the selection of papers/contributions within their panel. However the Program Committee remains the overall arbiter of the program and reserves the right to make changes if deemed necessary.
- While adherence to the conference theme is not the main criteria for panel selection, EASST and 4S encourage conveners (those proposing/organising a panel) to explore if there is a meaningful connection between their panel and the ideas outlined in the theme description.
Conference format and times
The EASST-4S 2024 Amsterdam conference will be a face-to-face (f2f) event with a programme running for four full days, 16-19 July 2024 at the Athena Institute at VU Amsterdam. Plenary sessions will be streamed; other virtual participation will not be facilitated. The panel sessions will start early in the morning on the 16th, and run until the late afternoon of the 19th.
Formats
Panels
Traditional Open Panel
A ‘traditional’ panel with academic papers.
Can have one to four 90-minute sessions, depending on the number of abstracts. The maximum number of abstracts per session is usually 5, minimum usually 3.
Combined Format Open Panel
A panel that welcomes experimental formats of knowledge expression. May include also academic paper presentations.
Can have one to four 90-minute sessions, depending on the number of abstracts. The maximum number of abstracts per session is usually 5, minimum usually 3.
Workshop
Workshops are conceptualised as practical events containing collective research activities, guided interactions and free-format exchanges leading to specific public outputs. A workshop may have up to two 90-minute sessions.
Roundtable
Here a group of scholars (usually no more than five) discusses themes/issues of general scholarly interest in front of (and subsequently with) an audience for the duration of a single 90-minute session. While a roundtable can include short (5-10 minute) contributions, the aim is to create a lively debate rather than focus on any one presenter.
Closed Panel
The content of a closed panel is pre-curated by panel convenors and submitted as a whole, with its academic papers, to the conference. Closed panels are one 90-minute session long and contain 4-5 paper abstracts.
Other
Making & Doing contribution
The Making & Doing program consists of experimental work and exploratory practices that are best presented interactively, outside of a traditional panel format. Making & Doing encourages STS researchers to share work that takes up speculative, participatory, reflexive and/or aesthetic approaches to the study of science, technology and society, as well as projects that experiment with frameworks for producing, sharing, and reconfiguring knowledge. The Making & Doing program will take place on Wednesday 17 July.
Meet-Up
Meet-ups are less formal social gatherings or meetings around research communities, publishing communities, shared approaches, research topics, or regional foci. Meet-ups will usually last 1 hour and take place during lunch breaks as not to compete with panels.
EASST and 4S membership
Being a member of EASST or 4S is not a requirement for presenting or convening at the conference. However, there will be a financial incentive to become an EASST or 4S member for all delegates, as non-members will pay a higher registration fee.
If you are interested in becoming a member of the associations, please follow the links below:
EASST membership
4S membership
Please note that these are two different associations with their respective fees, processes and contact emails!
Useful information for convenors and authors
Editing your proposal
Convenors and authors can click the 
link in the top right corner of this page to enter the conference login environment and edit their proposals.
Once logged in, ‘Log in’ becomes ‘Logged in’ with a drop-down menu.
From the drop-down menu, select ‘Conferences’, then, under ‘Current’ you will find EASST-4S 2024. Clicking on it will display your details relating to the conference.
Click on ‘Edit’ to open the panel or abstracts management page. If you make any changes, remember to save.
Co-authors cannot be added/removed after submission, nor can papers be withdrawn by the proposers themselves; for that, please email conference(at)easst4s2024.net.
Pre-circulation of papers
There is no rule about this, but some convenors are keen to pre-circulate completed papers. To facilitate this and save on email traffic, if requested by convenors, authors can upload PDFs of their papers within the login environment (paper edit page), which will then show as downloadable files beneath the abstract on the panel page – but only to other panelists (if they are logged in).
Timing of presentations
Each panel session slot will be 90 minutes long, accommodating a maximum of five presenters. How sessions are allocated is largely the panel convenors’ decision, however the norm is to allot each presenter about 15-18 minutes (for presentation and questions/discussion) for panels of five papers. The key is to respect the fact that many presenters have travelled a long way in order to be able to contribute and clearly need time to set out their argument. The division of a panel into sessions will be indicated in the programme, and the papers ordered within these sessions. While convenors may wish to amalgamate discussion time, where possible they should try to stick to the published distribution.
Communication between authors/convenors
While convenor/author email addresses are not displayed on the panel pages for privacy reasons, the in-built secure email messaging system allows site visitors to email convenors with queries. If you cannot work that, please email conference(at)easst4s2024.net to obtain relevant email addresses.
How to share your panel page with others
Click on the panel header to expand the panel details and then click on the circular share icon to find different options: email, Twitter, etc.
How to update your contact information
Log in from the Log in link top-right in the toolbar above and once logged in, click Logged In and Manage Account in the drop-down. You can add both a short bio and an avatar.
Adding co-authors, co-convenors, chairs and discussants
If you did not specify colleagues when proposing the panel/paper, you can add them through the system (see above how to log in).
Through the panel management page you can add participants by clicking on the green ‘add convenor/discussant/chair’ button at the bottom of each list of participants and adding their name in the box that appears. Remember to click on the green ‘save’ on the right hand side, or the bottom of the page, in order to save your changes.
Participants will appear as ‘proposed’ and not be visible on the public programme until they create an account and accept their role via the email sent to them.
If you have difficulties with this, please email the conference administrators with names and email addresses and role they’ll play, and we will email them a request to add their details so we can add them to your content.
