Author: Matjaz Vidmar

27th May 2026, SPRU, University of Sussex

AsSIST-UK invites PhD students, early-career researchers and others involved in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS) to join our 2026 Summer School. We offer a varied programme of interactive sessions to help scholars in the field develop the skills, strategies and contacts needed to build and strengthen their careers.

Final Programme

The Summer School is followed by the joint 60th SPRU and SSU Anniversary event:

We are delighted to announce that the 2025 Andrew Webster PhD Prize is awarded to:

Dr. Ryan Shum (University of Exeter) for his thesis:

Caring for microplastics: a multi-sited laboratory ethnography

Ryan’s thesis examines the intractable challenge of microplastics in the UK, studying the ontological and epistemological complexities surrounding these synthetic polymers.  The AsSIST-UK prize panel appreciated the study’s novel understanding of interactions between the emerging area of microplastics science, policymaking, and publics.

This thesis centred on the issue of microplastics in the UK examines the ontological and epistemological complexities surrounding these synthetic polymers. Microplastics (<5mm in diameter) have emerged as significant matters of concern across public and scientific communities due to their ubiquitous nature and the potential for chronic and transgenerational impacts. This study investigates microplastic entanglements through a multi-sited ethnography that follows these chemical-material traces in and out of scientific spaces. Conducted through a series of semi-structured interviews and ethnographic encounters, the objective of this study is to examine how research scientists generate knowledge about and come to care for microplastics in practice.

In doing so, the thesis aims to challenge dominant ways of understanding and responding to plastic pollution through an analysis centred on the materiality of microplastics. It maps the coming-together of this rapidly growing research community in the UK, scrutinises experimental practices assembled to sense these imperceptible objects, contends with imagined responses to microplastics and explores the uneasy task of managing them across divergent sites, namely, the laboratory and the beach. Throughout, the empirical attention stays close to the practical and ethical challenges faced by research scientists, policymakers, and citizens alike as they find ways of relating with a material that defies technoscientific methods of detection, resists normative solutions imagined to solve issues of waste and pollution and is here to stay into the long future.

The study underscores the need for a situated geographical approach to understanding microplastics that engages with the diverse and often compromised ways scientists attend to microplastics. At this contemporary moment when the question of how to respond to microplastics remains profoundly uncertain, this thesis offers a timely intervention that furthers understanding of the dynamic interactions between microplastic science, policy, and action in the face of this intractable challenge

We would also like to mention the highly commended runners-up:

Daniela Sclavo (University of Cambridge): Culture, Gender, and Flavour in the Conservation of Chile Pepper in Mexico, 1970s-present

Tomas Walker-Borsa (University of Oxford): Future Proof: The Meanings and Makings of ‘The Fibre Project’ on Haida Gwaii

AsSIST-UK awards an annual prize for a PhD thesis that demonstrates outstanding quality in the STS/Innovation Studies field in the previous year. The Prize is dedicated to the memory of AsSIST-UK co-founder, Prof. Andrew Webster and in recognition of his unwavering commitment to supporting early career researchers.

We are delighted to announce that the 2024 Andrew Webster PhD Prize is awarded to:

Dr Benedetta Catanzariti (University of Edinburgh) for her thesis: Seeing Affect: Knowledge Infrastructures in Facial Expression Recognition Systems

Benedetta’s thesis examines affective computing applications and their promise to ‘decode human affective experience’ – in essence, to read the face and its emotions, from frustration to boredom and depression – with scientific objectivity.

The nomination noted how she brings historical context to these practices by grounding them in older psychological theories (including overtly racist ones) and longstanding Western claims that there are universal emotions, and acknowledges an important legacy of critiques of such projects. Benedetta’s thesis, grounded in feminist studies of science and technology, offers empirical data on the current behind-the-scenes work that goes into the classification practices categorising affective behaviours and validating classification choices.

The thesis shows – perhaps surprisingly – that practitioners are well aware of the existing critiques of underlying Facial Expression Recognition theory, but profess agnosticism regarding this; their goal is to operationalise the underlying theory – even if it is flawed – to develop commercial applications in the workplace or healthcare. She argues that while the field claims this agnosticism in the face of critiques, this strategy obscures accountability towards these interpretive and normative decisions, sidestepping the social implications and underpinning origins of these systems. She also shows with impressive detail those instances in the FER process when human interpretation mediates and makes sense of affective data and the normative choices that go into labelling human affect – for instance, the power differentials seen between the different levels of expertise accorded to ‘expert coders’ on the one hand, and ‘lay annotators’ on the other; and how Facial Expression Recognition in the healthcare context reflects normative visions of health, the body and gender.

We also wish to strongly commend the following graduates for their impressive and novel work:

Dr Vassilis Galanow (University of Edinburgh): Expectations and Expertise in Artificial Intelligence
Commendation: “An outstanding piece of research that offers novel insights into the relationships between AI technologists and those involved in AI governance, and which brings together the sociology of expectation and studies of experience and expertise in new ways”        

Dr Louise Elstow (University of Lancaster): Getting the Measure of It: Radiation Knowledge Construction in Japan since 2011
Commendation: “A highly original and in-depth ethnography of the practices through which radiation knowledge is constructed in Japan in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdown, demonstrating the value of STS concepts and methods to the sociology of disaster and showiung how concepts and methods from STS can translate into the practical and policy work of emergency management professionals”

Congratulations to Benedetta and to Vassilis and Louise.