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AsSIST-UK ECR

The AsSIST ECR (Early Career Researchers) group brings together PhD students and post-doctoral researchers in the United Kingdom, working on science, technology, and innovation studies. We try to foster a supportive community for early-stage academics navigating the challenges of research careers. We aim to create a space where members can share experiences, discuss career anxieties, and learn from predecessors in the field. To achieve these goals, we organise bi-annual workshops that facilitate knowledge exchange and networking opportunities. Additionally, we host writing retreats, providing a dedicated environment for members to make progress on their research projects while benefiting from peer support. We are also launching a series of online workshops focused on developing key research skills.

The recent events:

ECR summer workshop in York

The AsSIST UK summer school is a space for early career researchers (ECR) to engage in activities that enhance professional development. Whether you are a postgraduate or a post-doctoral researcher, the event provides insights into the benefits and challenges of a career in research, inside and outside academia. And of course, the event also creates a space for networking enabling ECRs to build new relationships and connections among research colleagues in the field of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS).

The 2024 AsSIST UK summer school took place at The Hospitium, a venue located within the beautiful York Museum Gardens, in York city centre. Our attendees had the opportunity to hear about the professional experience and research journey of more senior colleagues and engaged in table discussions on popular topics of interest like publishing, applying for funding, and finding jobs outside academia, among others.

Event venue: The Hospitium, York

We concluded the event by announcing the Andrew PhD Webster Prize Award, followed by the 2024 Andrew J Webster Annual Lecture where Prof Jack Stilgoe discussed ‘The Organised Irresponsibility of AI’, both in memory of AsSIST-UK co-founder, Prof. Andrew Webster and in recognition of his unwavering commitment to supporting early career researchers. 

The 2024 Andrew Webster PhD prize was awarded to Dr Benedetta Catanzariti (University of Edinburgh) for her thesis: Seeing Affect: Knowledge Infrastructures in Facial Expression Recognition Systems. Congratulations!

Winter writing retreat in Highlands:

ISSTI-AsSIST UK Early Career Researchers’ Winter 2024 Writing Retreat

The Winter Writing Retreat, organised and sponsored by ISSTI- AsSIST UK, took place at the historic Castle Brodie, offering participants both the physical and mental space to focus on their writing projects. This retreat gathered ECR scholars from STIS, including PhD candidates, post-doctoral researchers, and lecturers, who were at various stages of their academic careers. The picturesque setting of Castle Brodie, steeped in Scottish culture and heritage, provided a perfect backdrop for the week of intense writing and networking. We learned that participants worked on their PhD dissertations, journal articles, book chapters, and concept notes, while also getting to know each other and building connections.

The daily structure of the retreat revolved around both writing and socialising, offering participants the opportunity to share their plans, seek feedback, and bond with their peers. Having clear, realistic objectives in advance was crucial for making the most of the retreat. For example, first-time participants share how they benefited from the advice and instructions on preparing materials, tables, and notes in advance to ensure a productive writing experience during the retreat. Alongside writing, participants enjoyed moments of relaxation, cooking meals together, watching documentaries, and sharing funny videos, which added to the fun and camaraderie. 

The retreat not only provided a focused environment for writing but also fostered a sense of community and support among participants. It facilitated the exchange of ideas, academic guidance, and constructive feedback on both writing and publishing. The experience was a balanced integration of productive writing sessions and meaningful connections, offering a unique opportunity for  development in a supportive and inspiring setting. The organiser generously sponsored food and accommodations and looked after the well-being of the participants, further enhancing the sense of care and support to ECR in STIS.

ECR committee members:

Isaac Lemo, PhD Student at Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex Business School

Pablo Molina Rossolino, PhD student at the Department of Sociology, University of York

Polina Chizhova-Wright, LUDeC PhD student in Curating and Architecture at Manchester Metropolitan University 

Xiao Yang, PhD student at Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation, University of Edinburgh

Owen Abbott’s book ‘Social Theorists of Morality: Essays on Moral Agency’ https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-75181-3

From the back page:

This book provides an interdisciplinary series of essays on key social theorists of morality. It explores contributions to social moral theorising made by W. E. B. Du Bois, G. H. Mead, Jane Addams, Alasdair MacIntyre, Carol Gilligan, Seyla Benhabib, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Jonathan Haidt. It thus seeks to integrate alternative voices at the “foundations” of sociological theorising about morality, while entering into dialogues with post-Enlightenment moral philosophy and contemporary moral psychology. In so doing, it engages with perspectives of pragmatism, virtue ethics, care ethics, feminist critiques, and moral foundations theory. The essays discuss key topics in social theories of morality, including moral action, socialisation, habit and reflexiveness, relationships, emotion, self, identity, racism and colonialism, universalism, and innateness. It centres crucial (but often overlooked) questions of moral power, and assesses the relationship between moral theorising and normative argument. The essays are conjoined by a running theme of moral agency—how it is constituted and how it is enacted—which orientates the book’s arguments and critiques.

“Owen Abbott’s Social Theorists of Morality is an excellent and much-needed work. His insightful account of morality goes beyond the standard theory canon and exploits synergies among sociological, psychological, and philosophical approaches. This is a must-read book for sociologists of morality, but also for sociological theorists, sociologists of culture, and social psychologists.”―Gabriel Abend, Professor of Sociology, University of Lucerne

“This is book is a tour de force. Focusing on a range of key thinkers, including neglected and marginalised voices, Abbott sets out key themes in the social theory of morality to establish what a properly ‘social’ account of morality requires. The clarity, breadth and depth of the analysis is remarkable.”― Wendy Bottero, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/454066/animals-robots-gods-by-keane-webb/9780241613207

From the back page:

We have always lived with ethically significant others, whether they are the pets we keep, the gods we believe in or the machines we are endowing with life. How should we treat them as our world changes? In Animals, Robots, Gods, acclaimed anthropologist Webb Keane provides a new vision of ethics, defined less by our minds, religion or society, and more by our interactions with those around us. Drawing on ground-breaking research by fieldworkers around the world, he explores the underpinnings of our moral universe. Along the way we investigate the ethical dilemmas of South Asian animal rights activists, Balinese cockfighters, Japanese robot fanciers – even macho cowboys. We meet a hunter in the Yukon who explains his prey generously gives itself up to him; a cancer sufferer in Thailand who sees his tumour as a reincarnated ox; a computer that gets you to confess your anxieties as if you were on the psychiatrist’s couch. With charm, wit and insight, Keane offers us a better understanding of our doubts and certainties, showing how centuries of conversations between us and non-humans inform our conceptions of morality, and will continue to guide us in the age of AI and beyond.

“Webb Keane has a marvellous ability to extend the scope of our moral compass not only to all varieties of human thought but also to the non-human beings with whom we share the biosphere. He is one of the world’s foremost and most thoughtful anthropologists. This book is a must-read, written with wit and clarity”—Professor Dame Caroline Humphrey

“The boundaries of our moral worlds are in flux as we rethink the claims made on us by animals, robots, humans on life-support, and AI. Webb Keane, the most important contemporary anthropologist of language and interaction, brilliantly guides us through the resulting murk. Drawing on research from around the world, and showing how people’s engagements with supernatural figures long ago raised questions of moral standing that we now apply to these other beings, this gracefully written book will make you think productively about your own life in ways you likely never imagined”—Joel Robbins

Just two month ago, Portable Cow crossed the Atlantic for the very first time. Photographer and anthropologist, Liz Hingley, and I, Camille Bellet, joined art historian, Emily K. Morgan, at the Iowa State University School of Design to present some of the findings from my Wellcome Trust-funded research on sensor technologies and human-cow relationships in farming in France and the UK.

Supported by the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities at Iowa State University, we had the opportunity over a week to engage the Iowa State University and Ames communities in a discussion about human-cow relationships in farming. Through a series of glittering events—including an art exhibition, a symposium, a panel discussion, and interactive sensory workshops—Portable Cow sparked curiosity, even attracting the attention of the local press.

Originally conceived as a miniature exhibition contained within a bespoke 3D-printed box—including objects, archival documents and ethnographic observations I generated during my fieldwork, and Liz’s photographs—Portable Cow was designed to foster engagement and discussion in exhibition and workshop settings. This first exhibition in the United States took Portable Cow out of its box and into a gallery space, inviting visitors to reflect on cow lives, farmers’ experiences, and the human-cow bonds shaped by digital technologies.

Of course, Portable Cow is only just beginning! Liz and I are actively working on unboxing it in France, the UK, and beyond. If you would like to exchange ideas, discuss the project, learn more, or explore the possibility of hosting an exhibition or workshop within your group or institution, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me via email (camille.bellet@manchester.ac.uk). Portable Cow is only at the start of its journey—waiting to be discovered, shared, and to keep evolving.

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.

Book your place!

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.

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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.

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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.

11am – 6pm | Thursday 5^th September 2024

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.

Reserve your place [registration closes 31st July]: 

SUMMER SCHOOL PROGRAMME
[click here for full updated programme]

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