AsSIST-UK 2021 – Infrastructures, Institutions and Cultures: New Relations and New Challenges
AsSIST-UK 2021
9-10 September 2021. ONLINE
This past year has seen many of the routines of our daily life disrupted by Covid-19. Yet, apart from the personal and interpersonal challenges this has created, we have also become more aware of the ways in which social orderings and the technologies which help to reproduce them have become not only more visible but more fractured and unstable, producing new forms of social inequality and injustice. But these developments too have brought new ideas and possibilities for a re-ordering of socio-technical relations and practices. More widely, challenges associated with climate change, public health and threats to democratic institutional processes at national and international levels have led to calls for new forms of engagement, changes in politics and the creation of cultures of accountability and care.
The 2021 AsSIST-UK Annual Conference invites papers that discuss these broad issues and the new relations and challenges they create. It asks how Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS) not only casts new light on these challenges but also opens up ways through which they might be addressed. We invite papers that examine these issues empirically, theoretically and methodologically drawing on scholarship from the STIS community on which the Association is built.
Keynote speakers
We are delighted to announce our Keynote speakers for the Conference and the title of their presentations:
Associate Professor Kornelia Konrad, University of Twente, Netherlands https://people.utwente.nl/k.e.konrad
An STIS perspective on socio-technical futures in the governance of innovation
Professor Sabina Leonelli, University of Exeter, UK (Professor Sabina Leonelli | Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology | University of Exeter)
The Open Data Challenge: Cultural, Institutional and Infrastructural Dilemmas of Data Sharing
Professor Martyn Pickersgill, University of Edinburgh, UK (Martyn Pickersgill | The University of Edinburgh)
The Ontological Work of Epistemic Infrastructures: Negotiating the Novel within Science (Studies) and Society
AsSIST-UK 2019 – Science, Technology and Innovation Studies: Critical Inquiries in Theory and Practice
The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, September 9th-10th
Conference Report is now available here
The 2019 Conference of the Association was a chance for members and friends to gather and share their current and planned work, and examine the state of the art and future contributions of theoretical and practice-based work in STIS as new challenges and opportunities arise for rethinking our approach to substantive, methodological and policy-related developments.
Conference programme
Final conference programme (PDF)
Book of Abstracts (PDF with clickable Table of Contents)
Location map including food and drink recommendations (Google Maps)
Keynote speakers

Albena Yaneva
Professor of Architectural Theory at the University of Manchester
The Good Experiment: How Space Matters for Nanoscience

Claire Marris, Reader, Centre for Food Policy, City University
Jane Calvert, Professor of Science and Technology Studies, University of Edinburgh
Roadmaps, roadblocks and juggernauts: the limits of policy intervention in synthetic biology
AsSIST-UK 2016 – The Past, Present and Future of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies
The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation, Tuesday 29th November 2016
This one day conference has the theme The Past, Present and Future of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies. Linked to SSU50 Celebrating 50 years of STIS, it features guest keynotes from Prof Bruno Latour ( Sciences Po, Paris) and Prof. Helga Nowotny (former President of the European Research Council).
The full programme and joining instructions are attached and available online here: http://bit.ly/50yearsSTIS-AsSIST2016-SSU50
Thanks to generous support from the University of Edinburgh, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies subject group, the University of York, Science and Technology Studies Unit, AsSIST-UK and the British Society for History of Science, there is no registration fee for you as a member of AsSIST-UK (though you will need to cover your own travel and accommodation).
Robin Williams, Andrew Webster, Vicky Singleton, Jane Calvert and Matjaz Vidmar (Programme Committee)