Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

Maja Horst, University of Copenhagen
Judy Wacjman, London School of Economics

Concept and organization:

Erik Aarden, Ulrike Felt, Maximilian Fochler, Anna Pichelstorfer, Thomas Völker (all Univ. Vienna), Doris Allhutter (ITA Vienna), Martina Merz (Univ. Klagenfurt), Gernot Rieder (IT Univ. Copenhagen).

Contact: office@sts-austria.org

There is no doubt: we live in technoscientific worlds. Scientific knowledge and technological innovations have become key drivers of change in contemporary societies that restructure both our public and private lives. These observations have shaped the intellectual agenda of the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) for several decades. As the contemporary preoccupation with innovation brings forth ever new articulations of technoscience (including social sciences and humanities) and society, the underlying core questions have not lost their timeliness and relevance: How do we engage with broader issues of inclusion and exclusion (in terms of e.g. gender, class, culture, disability) associated with technoscientific innovations? How are societal values expressed through – and simultaneously stabilized by – these innovations? What counts as a legitimate setting from which to make knowledge claims in democratic societies? How do our critical methods of investigation translate into methods of intervention?
This conference invites participants to restate the issue of what it means to live in technoscientific worlds today. This involves to explore the multiplicity of contemporary sites of technoscience as well as the ways we live with (and through) scientific knowledge and technologies. Rapid change is part and parcel of the technoscientific worlds we aim to analyze. Thus, we particularly invite careful reflection of the positions we think and speak from, both theoretically and methodologically.
This conference celebrates the launch of STS Austria, a new professional organization and a sign of the vitality and maturation of the field in this country.

More information can be found on our Conference Website