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* Opinions expressed on the Blog and Newsletter represent perspectives of individual authors and not of the SKAT Section or ASA.
Meet our SKAT student members
Every year we publish profiles of some of our SKAT section student members to highlight some of the important work that they are doing. Below, see the bios of nine of our student members. If you see them at ASA and at the SKAT reception or business meeting, remember to say hi! Jeba Humayra (Ph.D. Student, George Mason University) I am a PhD student in Sociology at George Mason University, specializing in Political Sociology with a concentration in Globalization. I hold both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Chittagong in Bangladesh. During my…
50th Anniversary of STS at Vassar College
The STS program at Vassar College celebrated its 50th anniversary. To mark the occasion we organized a conference on “Science and the Culture Wars,” April 3-5, 2025 held at the Vassar Institute for the Liberal Arts. Naomi Oreskes gave the keynote address, the Pauline Newman ’47 Distinguished Lecture, “From Anti-Government to Anti-Science and Back Again”. Additionally, around 25 academics from different disciplines including STS, sociology, history, law and cultural studies joined for panels and discussions on a number of topics including “Politics of Medical and Public Health Controversies”, “Science and Religion in Culture and the Courts”, “Making Scientific Identities and…
Computing, Co-Creation, and the Well-Informed Citizen
By Besnik Pula, Virginia Tech, bpula@vt.edu In its landmark 2021 report on AI ethics, UNESCO cautions that a “digital and civic literacy deficit” could deepen divides between those who understand and shape computing technologies and those who remain excluded. This concern goes beyond issues of device ownership or software familiarity. It reflects how citizens, policymakers, and companies grapple with systems whose technical complexity makes meaningful engagement daunting. When the public lacks paths to gain relevant knowledge, a small coterie of experts and large corporate players end up directing the design, use, and regulation of emerging technologies—sometimes with little public scrutiny.…
New Workshop: Theory and Analysis in Science, Knowledge, and Society (TASKS)
Theory and Analysis in Science, Knowledge, and Society (TASKS) is a workshop based at City College, CUNY for CUNY and New York City researchers. We discuss working papers circulated by members and visitors and provide feedback. Topics of interest amongst TASKS members include: technologies and reproductive health, state-expert relations, the use of scientific evidence in legal proceedings, how geopolitics shape scientific norms and priorities, organizational dynamics of biotechnology innovation, the politics of genetic knowledge, social media platforms, and more. We welcome disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches from sociology, political science, anthropology, sociolegal studies, science and technology studies, gender studies, and more.…
“Revisiting Biomedicalization” (Feb 28-March 1, 2025)
On February 28 and March 1, Alka Menon (Yale) and Melanie Jeske (Baylor College of Medicine) led a convening at Yale University titled “Revisiting Biomedicalization: Toward a Technology-Focused Approach.” Under the rubric of medicalization and biomedicalization, substantially developed by Peter Conrad and Adele Clarke, medical sociologists and STS scholars have characterized shifts in the landscape of biomedicine in the late 20th century. The convening invited participants to further elucidate and contextualize recent developments in medicine and health, in particular the proliferation of technology and technological promise, using empirical cases including health wearables, genetic/genomic tests, diagnostic screening, and AI applications in…
Q&A with Lauren Olsen, author of Curricular Injustice
Interviewed by Hayden J. Fulton on February 28th, 2025 Lauren D. Olsen, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Temple University. She is the author of Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities (Columbia University Press 2024). Hayden: To start off, I was wondering if you’d be able to speak to how you ended up interested in medical education and this specific case of how the social science and humanities are included in the medical curriculum? Lauren: Yeah, I love that question. I guess it kind of depends on where I want to start the biography or the…
Q&A with Ya-Wen Lei, author of The Gilded Cage
Interviewed by Jorge Ochoa on March 7, 2025 Ya-Wen Lei is Professor in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University, and is also affiliated with the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She is the author of The Gilded Cage: Techno-State Capitalism in China (Princeton University Press, 2003) and The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media, and Authoritarian Rule in China (Princeton University Press, 2018). She is the recipient of the 2024 Robert K. Merton Book Award. Jorge Ochoa: First, congratulations on receiving the 2024 Robert K. Merton Book Award from the SKAT section of…
Q&A with Andrew Lakoff, Author of Planning for the Wrong Pandemic
Interviewed by Molly Clark-Barol on December 2, 2024 Andrew Lakoff is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Planning for the Wrong Pandemic: Covid-19 and the Limits of Expert Knowledge (Polity 2024). Molly: Thanks so much for chatting, Andy. I just wanted to let you know how much I really appreciated this book. To start with, I think it’s so accessibly written. It feels like the kind of book that I would give to someone like my parents– engaged, intelligent, “lay” people. It really captures the relevance of these STS theories…
9 Tips for Preparing Your ASA Submission
Prepared by Molly Clark-Barol and Larry Au Last month, we crowdsourced tips and advice from SKAT Section members on things to keep mind when preparing your ASA paper or extended abstract submission. We received a lot of helpful suggestions from the SKAT community. Here are some ideas that we gathered: Remember that submissions for ASA 2025 in Chicago will close on February 26, 2025 at 11:49 pm ET. To learn more, please see the call for submissions: https://www.asanet.org/2025-annual-meeting/call-for-submissions. Good luck!
Q&A with Natalie Aviles author of An Ungovernable Foe
Interviewed by Hayden Fulton on November 18th, 2024 Natalie B. Aviles is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. She is the author of An Ungovernable Foe: Science and Policy Innovation in the U.S. National Cancer Institute (Columbia University Press 2024). Hayden: Throughout the book, you make a strong mandate on why STS scholars and sociologists more broadly should be studying federal bureaucracies, including the NCI. To start off, I was wondering if you could say a bit about how you came to this case? Natalie: I came to this case originally out of what I think…
2024 Giving Tuesday Campaign
In 2020, our section founded two awards—the Wells-Duster and Emancipatory Practice Awards—which are intended to foster and elevate essential work in our subfield. The first recognizes outstanding scholarship from early-career scholars that advances understanding of Black, African American, or Indigenous intersections with science, knowledge, and technology. The second recognizes anti-racist social action within our subfield or through broader public engagement. To see the 2025 calls for nomination, go here. Despite amazing fundraising efforts when the awards were launched, we haven’t yet reached our goal of $20,000 to qualify for a special interest-bearing account from the ASA. Indeed, we are still…
New Publications from Section Members (2024-2025)
This is a running list of recent publications from SKAT Section members from Fall 2024 to Summer 2025. To submit an announcement for the Fall 2024 Newsletter, please use this Google Form: https://forms.gle/Jrd9Uodeg5KA3wvz6 To send an announcement out to the Listserv, please email: skatchairasa@gmail.com Articles Gil Eyal, Larry Au, and Cristian Capotescu 2024. “Trust is a Verb!: A Critical Reconstruction of the Sociological Theory of Trust”. Sociologica 18(2): 169-191. https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/19316 (Published with Commentaries from Elena Esposito and Guido Möllering, with a response) Zhou, Di & Zhang, Yinxian. Political biases and inconsistencies in bilingual GPT models—the cases of the U.S. and China. Sci Rep 14, 25048 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-76395-w “Marginalized measures:…
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