Extending ongoing dialogue about Transnational STS in recent years, this panel invites scholars located around the globe to share their work conceptualizing, practicing and extending Transnational STS in different ways. In particular, we are interested in drawing out and foregrounding student experiences in various STS programs and organizations (including formations outside of the academy) to reflect on the paradigms and programmes in which we are training and being trained. This year’s conference theme raises important questions about turning a critical eye to the oppressions maintained within technoscience, especially neoliberal university structures. Attending to the transgenerational character of collaborative relations, both within and beyond the university, sets up the possibility to dismantle violent, entrenched practices and build alliances that span age and temporal contexts. Inspired by critical university studies and radical education thinkers like Paulo Freire, Gregory Bateson, and Gayatri Spivak, we call for transgenerational and transformative listening and dialogue and are interested in learning about experiments and tactics that help build “good relations” across geographic, disciplinary and generational hierarchies. Leveraging conversations from last year’s three-part panel on Transnational STS (find abstracts at https://stsinfrastructures.org/content/open-panel-4seasst-2020-transnational-sts-theories-practices-and-pedagogies), rather than approaching “transnational” as an ideal temporal-spatial universalism to be achieved, we question and reflect on the use value of the analytic of the “nation-state” when studying technoscientific developments across contexts. Layering such transnational sensibilities with transgenerational listening promises fresh perspectives on the character and use of STS at varying scales and locations. This panel furthers work being undertaken by the Student Section of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (6S) to develop a reference database of STS programs around the world with the aim of fostering greater transnational collaborations and network building. The panel will be chaired by Kim Fortun and Sharon Traweek will serve as discussant.
Contributions may address, among others, the following questions:
How are transnational student research and collaborative relations formed and organized? What kinds of tactics have they leveraged? How do research networks set collaborative agendas and what enables them to sustain over time?
What infrastructures can support transnational and transgenerational STS collaborations, particularly those that extend beyond the academy?
What tactics do STS programs use to stay tuned to both local and transnational contexts and issues?
What pedagogical philosophies (explicitly or implicitly) orient differently situated STS programs, and to what effect?
How does transnational STS contribute to STS teaching and pedagogy? How can transnational STS add to local efforts in engaging with multiple publics, decision-makers, scientists, activists, and other related actors?