STS Helsinki will host the working group ‘Science, technology and society’ at The Annual Conference of The Westermarck Society 2022 in Jyväskylä 24–25 March 2021. The theme of the 2022 conference will be “Democracy!”. Keynote speakers include Chris Bail, Mischa Gabowitsch, and Minna Ruckenstein.

The conference will be organised in-person at the University of Jyväskylä. The conference will be moved online if the pandemic situation so demands.

Science, technology and society working group

Science and Technology Studies (STS) is an interdisciplinary field of study that examines the interaction between society, science, and technology. STS pays attention to how different fields, such as law, politics, and everyday life, become intertwined with science and technology. This is relevant when thinking about heatedly debated topics as diverse as climate change, the role of experts, medicine, genetics, gender, robotics or organic food. The field calls for a deeper understanding of the development, processes, practices and outcomes of such social phenomena. STS explores the mechanisms behind knowledge claims and ontological assumptions that guide our everyday. Or, as is often said: STS looks at how the world defined by science and technology could be otherwise.

STS Helsinki calls for theoretical, methodological and empirical papers on current research in social studies of science. Papers both in Finnish and English are welcome. The aim of this working group is to offer a forum to discuss the practices that contribute to the shaping of technoscientific objects and subjects. How is scientific knowledge established and negotiated, and how do historical processes contribute to the development of certain technologies? We especially welcome papers that reflect on the role and state of democracy in the field of STS. This working group is defined as a meeting point for both Finnish and international scholars to share and discuss their work with others studying science, technology and society.

Please apply to the working group by sending your abstract to the working group co-ordinators. The deadline is Friday 28th of January 2022. The maximum length of abstracts is 300 words and they should be in .doc, .docx, or .rtf format.

Santeri Räisänen, University of Helsinki, santeri.raisanen@helsinki.fi
Heta Tarkkala, University of Helsinki, heta.tarkkala@helsinki.fi
Susanna Vase, University of Helsinki, susanna.vase@helsinki.fi

For more information about the conference, please go to:  https://sosiologipaivat.fi/

MID-TERM WORKSHOP ORGANIZED BY RN24 (SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY NETWORK) OF THE EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

MAY 23-24, 2022; HELSINKI, FINLAND

 

During the past few years, more and more areas of life have been permeated by the idea that digitalization, data and artificial intelligence will provide efficacy, services and new possibilities for both societies and their citizens. This can be seen for example in banking, transportation and health care. At the same time, around the globe, dozens of policies and strategies regarding the development of artificial intelligence have been published. Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars have paid attention to the processes and developments related to AI and related technologies and practices becoming increasingly ubiquitous in society. For STS this provides a unique opportunity to study and understand social and technological change as well as changes in the ways knowledge is produced.

 

This workshop invites presentations which examine AI and/or digitalized society, and their consequences in everyday life. Possible presentation topics may include, but is not limited to:

 

• AI/digitalization and governance
• Algorithmic culture
• AI/Digitalization and privacy/surveillance
• AI/Digitalization in different professions such as healthcare, law, and transportation
• The design of AI systems and building of algorithms and machine learning models
• AI at home
• Restructuring of activities for the application of AI, for example in a workplace
• The role of AI/digitalization in organizational change
• Implications of AI/digitalization in knowledge production
• Methodological approaches to study AI, data and digitalization

We invite contributions from researchers at all stages of the academic career, but we particularly encourage early career researchers to submit abstracts. Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words.

 

Keynote speakers:

 

Florian Jaton – STS Lab, University of Lausanne

Nanna Bonde Thylstrup – Department of Management, Society and Communication, Copenhagen Business School

 

Abstract submission deadline is January 21, 2022.  Abstracts should be submitted to aaro.tupasela@helsinki.fi.

For further information please contact Aaro Tupasela (aaro.tupasela@helsinki.fi) or Heta Tarkkala (heta.tarkkala@helsinki.fi)