Welcome to the 22nd edition of the AsSIST-UK Newsletter, reporting on news, research and community activities across the Spring and Summer of 2024.
This is the second of the new web-based newsletters, where articles are hyperlinked and can be found at the www.assistuk.org/news site.
Also, please, make sure you remember to register for the new membership system and keep details up to date.
AsSIST-UK 2024 Early Career Researchers’ Summer School
*Registration closed*
11am – 6pm | Thursday 5th 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.
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.
Sign Up for the Andrew Webster Annual Public Lecture
organised by the University of York, Science and Technology Studies Unit in memory of AsSIST-UK co-founder Prof Andrew Webster.
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.
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’.
Sign-up via Eventbrite
Report on the Re: constructs workshop exploring conceptual exchange between STS and Sociology
What are the key concepts at the intersection of Sociology and Science and Technology Studies (STS) today? The Backchannels blog of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) has posted a report [EMBED LINK: https://4sonline.org/news_manager.php?page=36073] about the international workshop Re: constructs which took place in December 2023 at the University of Essex and explored conceptual exchanges between Science and Technology Studies and Sociology. The workshop was co-hosted by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (University of Warwick) and the Sociology Department at the University of Essex in December 2023 and featured speakers from both fields. Presentations each examined a key concept, from autonomy to experiment and power, telling a story of their interdisciplinary formation, uptake and transformation: Monika Krause (LSE) examined Symmetry, Susann Wagenknecht & Richard Groß (Technische Universität Dresden) the Situation, and Anne Pollock (KCL) Durability.
New Publications
Aparicio, Alberto. Accept no limits: biocontainment and the construction of a safer space for experimentation in xenobiology as a legacy of Asilomar. BioSocieties (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-023-00322-x
Ulnicane, I. (2024) Intersectionality in Artificial Intelligence: Framing Concerns and Recommendations for Action. Social Inclusion, 12: 7543 https://doi.org/10.17645/si.7543
Ulnicane, I. (2024) Governance fix? Power and politics in controversies about governing generative AI, Policy and Society, puae022, https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puae022
New project to explore the past, present and future of environmental biotechnology as a field
Adrian Ely, Josie Coburn and Duncan Moore (Sussex) and Jane Calvert, Rob Smith and Kyle Parker (Edinburgh) have embarked upon on a six month initiative to explore the past, present and future of environmental biotechnology as a field. This is funded by the BBSRC Environmental Biotechnology Network (EB-Net).ore information is forthcoming.
