Science, Knowledge and Technology Today:

Meeting the Moment, Engendering Just Futures

Register now for the conference: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScFJfpIWizDsrqPQUzD7xwHSvHNdFDrabWZDdZPEinbVNjGDA/viewform

The Science, Knowledge & Technology (SKAT) section of the American Sociological Association (ASA) will host a pre-conference in New York City on August 7, 2026 at the CUNY Graduate Center. This conference draws attention to the many crises facing global citizens in this current moment. Technological advances and scientific inquiry have contributed to global inequities, but science and technology studies also offers theoretical tools for understanding and challenging the current conjuncture.

In sociology, some of our most enduring macro theories emerge out of moments of transition, which were often prompted by or initiated shifts in science, knowledge and technology. We are currently living through unprecedented shifts in global colonizing forces, governing and immigration regimes, military apparatuses, technologies of surveillance and artificial intelligence, with immense implications for new forms of exclusion and oppression. SKAT scholars are well-positioned to offer new theoretical insights to help explain the contemporary conjuncture, the transitions we are witnessing, and to imagine more just futures.  

Plenary speakers include:

• Alondra Nelson, former deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and principal deputy director for science and society in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and current Harold F. Linder Chair at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, 
• Steven Epstein, John C. Shaffer Professor in the Humanities and Professor in the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University, 
• Janet Shim, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Francisco and Senior Co-Editor at Social Science & Medicine, and 
• Scott Frickel, Professor of Environment and Society and Chair of Sociology at Brown University, 
• Marion Fourcade, Professor of Sociology and Director of Social Science Matrix at the University of California, Berkeley, 
• Siri Suh, Associate Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University,
• Santiago Molina, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University, and
• Jon Shaffer, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Vermont.

The full conference program will be posted in June.

If you would like to donate to the conference, you can do that through the ASA portal: https://my.asanet.org/cv5/cgi-bin/memberdll.dll/info?wrp=donationnew.htm&selDon=ASASC273AMO

If your email is associated with an ASA profile, you will be asked to log into the Member Portal first and then click on the link. You may need to wait a few minutes to receive a receipt. Don’t resubmit a payment more than once. 

If you have any questions about the conference, please email: SKATtoday@gmail.com

SKAT Pre-Conference Committee: Claire Decoteau (Chair), Emily Vasquez, Jessica Halliday Hardie, Jorge Ochoa, Larry Au, Melanie Jeske, Natalie Aviles, Santiago Molina, Zach Griffen

We would like to thank the following sponsors: The Moynihan Center at the City College of New York, Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois Chicago, Department of Sociology at Northwestern University, Department of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center.