The 2025 Andrew J Webster lecture
Speaker: Professor Elizabeth Shove, Lancaster University
Date: 17 June 2025
Elizabeth is a Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, where she researches the relation between consumption, everyday practice and ordinary technologies. The author or editor of twelve books, Elizabeth has a long and distinguished career, and is currently working on her latest book, on which this lecture is based.
We are delighted to be announcing the biennial ASSIST 2025 conference and invite contributions to its programme.
This conference of will take place at The University of Edinburgh between 2-3 June 2025.
Participants are invited to also stay on for a gala on 4th June 2025 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the publication of Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman’s groundbreaking collection The Social Shaping of Technology, with invited keynote presentations from Donald MacKenzie, Judy Wajcman, Knut H Sorensen and Sampsa Hyysalo.
We welcome contributions that engage with our theme this year: REFLEXION.
Reflexivity has become something of a touchstone for many in science, technology and innovation studies (STIS). But what do we mean by reflexion? How does it contribute to our understanding and our practice as STIS scholars?
Please use the form below to submit your abstract.
The closing date is 28 February 2025. EXTENDED DEADLINE: 7th March 2025.
We will confirm acceptance of papers by 31 March 2025.
Explain how your proposed contribution relates to the REFLEXIONS theme. Abstracts should be no more than 500 words, and should specify which format is the best fit. Accepted proposals will be published as part of the online conference proceedings.
The AsSIST-UK Early Career Researchers (ECR) Group and the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation (ISSTI) at the University of Edinburgh are pleased to announce the annual week-long writing retreat between 15th and 22nd February 2025.
The retreat will be hosted at Fyvie Castle near Turriff in Aberdeenshire, which is an 800-year old Category-A-listed fortress owned by the National Trust of Scotland. We have space for 12 early career academics and scholars working on pieces of writing related to core topics in science, technology and innovation studies (irrespective of what department they are based in).
You must have a writing project to work on and be a Masters or PhD student, or early-stage academic within 5 years of receiving your PhD, engaging in research in a topic relating the broad fields of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Innovation Studies.
Alongside writing, there will be opportunities for informal feedback and discussion of cross-cutting topics and issues, as well as film nights, nature walks, etc.
There is no travel funding available this year, but as before, the attendance is free of charge.
Apply now – the deadline is 22nd December 2024.
To apply for a space, please complete our online form below:
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.
The Hospitium, Museum Gardens, York
Anton Grabolle / Better Images of AI / AI Architecture / CC-BY 4.0
AsSIST-UK invites PhD students, early career researchers and others involved in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS) to join our 2024 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.
Sessions include skill development workshops (on publishing papers, writing research proposals etc), meet-a-mentor sessions, networking, panels on how to build your academic career; debate on how STIS scholars sustain their intellectual contribution in today’s dynamic and challenging higher education landscape.
Participation is FREE of charge and refreshments and light lunch are provided.
11-11.30 Coffee, Welcome, Introductions
11.30-13.00 Session 1: Building your wonderful career
13.00-14.00 Lunch, Meet-A-Mentor
14.00-15.30 Session 2: Skill-sharing panels
15.30-16.00 Coffee Break
16.00-17.30 Session 3: Building an intellectual identity
17.30-18.00 Andrew Webster Prize Award; Wrap up and Networking
18.30 After the summer school you are invited to join the Annual Public Lecture organised by the University of York, Science and Technology Studies Unit in memory of AsSIST-UK co-founder: Prof Andrew Webster.
Tempest Anderson Hall Museum Street York YO1 7FR
Sign-up separately via Eventbrite
Speaker: Professor Jack Stilgoe, University College London
Date: Thursday 5 September 2024
Location: Tempest Anserson Hall, Museum Street, York, YO1 7FR
Prof Jack Stilgoe
As the promises of artificial intelligence attract growing social, political and financial attention, risks and responsibilities are being imagined in ways that serve the interests of a technoscientific elite. In the UK and elsewhere, organisations are starting to institutionalise a mode of governance that presumes to know and take care of public concerns. And new research communities are forming around questions of AI ’safety’ and ‘alignment’. In this talk, I will draw on research into public and expert attitudes and reflect on my role as a proponent, analyst and actor in debates about ‘Responsible AI’.
Book your free ticket below:
To commemorate the life and work of Professor Andrew Webster, the Department of Sociology and SATSU established an annual lecture series that will showcase research in the broadly conceived area of science, technology and society.
Professor in the Sociology of Science at the University of York since 1999, Andrew was the founder and director of the Science and Technology Studies Unit, which he established originally at Anglia Ruskin University in 1988.
He was Head of the Department of Sociology at York between 2004-2009 and then the Dean of Social Sciences. He was elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Science in 2007.
He co-founded the UK Association for the Study of Innovation, Science and Technology (AsSIST-UK).
Read more about Andrew’s career and his huge impact on the academic community and beyond.
Manuela Perrotta has launched the Remaking Fertility research digest series.
These concise briefs offer a summary of key findings and policy implications from her ongoing British Academy Innovation Fellowship. The first research digest focuses on ‘Evidence Gaps and Information Provision in Fertility Care: Addressing Key Needs, Priorities, and Challenges.’
Jane Calvert’s book, ‘A Place for Science and Technology Studies’ is now published.
It’s available Open Access here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546942/a-place-for-science-and-technology-studies/
(It was the basis of Jane’s talk for the Andrew Webster Memorial Lecture in York in September 2023).
“Tecnoscienza: Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies” has published an English-language book review by Dr. Robert Williams, senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at The University of Akron, of “La Servitude Electrique: Du reve de liberte a la prison numerique” by French scholars Gerard Dubey and Alain Gras.
Informed by a philosophical anthropology of science and technology studies, this review queries the authors’ thesis that although electricity appears innocent, especially as light, power and information, it nonetheless relies on fossil fuels for its generation.
Best regards,
Robert Williams, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer
Department of Philosophy and Williams Honor College
The HumAIne Lab at Bochum is accepting incoming research visits this summer from PGR/ECR researchers interested in responsible AI.
This is the link (interested people should apply to Uta Wilkins).
