What to expect:

Speakers are expected to submit papers before the meeting, and attendees are expected to read these in advance. There are no parallel ‘streams’ in SDN. Everyone attends all presentations and participate in discussion. This plenary format contributes to the unique value of SDN as a place for nurturing intellectual excellence as well as personal connections.

Plenary roundtables featuring junior and senior members of the Network create additional opportunities for addressing issues of shared professional interest. In keeping with its core training and mentoring mission, the SDN meetings provide ample opportunities are graduate students to meet with more senior scholars. These interactions have proved extremely important for enlarging career opportunities for young scholars in STS.

Who can attend:

Anyone is welcome to register. You do not need to be a member of the Science and Democracy Network to attend. We do assume that attendance means you are interested in becoming a member and participating in Network activities. Membership is currently free. Learn more about becoming a member.

8:30

Registration and Coffee

9:00

Welcome and Introductions
Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard Kennedy School)

10:00

Session 1: Expertise as Ideology

Chair: J. Benjamin Hurlbut (Arizona State University)

Daniel Barben (University of Klagenfurt, Austria)

Scientists’ Taming of Genome Editing: On the Power and Limits of Conceptual Distinctions in Governing a Revolutionary Technology

Yu-Yueh Tsai (Harvard STS & Harvard Yenching Institute)

WHO for Health for All? Covid 19 and Taiwan’s Exceptional Governance

Anthony Burton (Simon Fraser University)

First Principles, Mimesis, and Silicon Valley Ideology

Gabriel Dorthe (Harvard STS & RIFS Potsdam)

Breathing News: Affinity, Knowledge and Citizenship in Conspiracy Theories

12:00

Lunch

Lightning Talks: Current Topics in STS

Chairs: Nicole Bassoff & Pariroo Rattan (Harvard STS)

Rodrigo Araiza Bravo (Harvard University)

Quantum Advantage: The U.S.-China Ideological Divide and Emergent Technologies

Dimas Romadhon (University of Washington)

Halal-by-design: Recombining Islam, Politics, and Technology in Indonesian Halal-certified Vaccine Development

Ross Cheung (Nanyang Technological University)

Sociotechnical and future imaginaries in the Expo 2020 Dubai and the Museum of the Future

Alanna Coombes (University of Southern California)

Autonomous Vehicles – Social and Technological Dynamics to inform the Future

Rohan Grover (University of Southern California)

Accounting for Indeterminacy: The Trouble with Transparency(ies) in Data Protection Compliance Work

13:30

Session 2: Digital Practices

Chair: Søren Riis (Roskilde University)

Ana-Maria Herman (University of Greenwich)

The Precarity of Everyday Practices: Technological Breakdown and the Case of an Augmented Reality Exhibit called MUM

Wanheng Hu (Harvard STS & Cornell University)

Knowledge inscription in machine learning: Re-enactment of medical expertise and the credibility of medical image annotators in the Chinese AI industry

Katelyn Wan Fei Ma (York University)

Who Defines Cyber Financial Crime Victimization?

Margarita Boenig-Liptsin (ETH Zurich)

Columbus did not walk here: Authenticity and the ground of justice in the digital age

15:30

Coffee

16:00

Session 3: Knowledge as Power: Cross-National Perspectives

Chair: Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard Kennedy School)

Su Huai (York University)

Transnational History of British and Chinese Science in the 19th Century

Amani Ponnaganti (UW-Madison)

Submerged Empire: Racial grammars of Governance in Houston, 1897-1939

Pratama Pradheksa (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Decolonializing the Cold War: Nuclear Politics in Postcolonial Indonesia,1954-1966

Pariroo Rattan (Harvard STS)& Nicolas Huppenbauer (University of Bonn)

Citizenship in the Digital Age: Resistance to Data Governance Practices across China, the EU, India and the US

17:30

Refreshments

18:00

Roundtable on Truth and Skepticism (Bell Hall, Belfer Center, 5th Floor)

Chair: Pierre-Benoît Joly (INRAE)

Craig Calhoun (Arizona State University)

Age of Doubt or Age of Credulity?

Respondents: Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard University) & Melanie Smallman (University College London)

19:15

Adjourn

8:30

Coffee

8:45

Session 4: Technoscientific Imaginaries

Chair: Margo Boenig-Liptsin (ETH Zürich)

Philipp Neudert (RWTH Aachen University)

The Limits of Responsibilization? Responsibility-Boundary-Work through Future Visions of Neuromorphic Computing

Marlise Schneider (Technical University of Munich)

“Time to bury the rustbelt”: Imagining Innovative Futures in Upstate New York through the CHIPS and Science Act

Tadeusz Rudek (Jagiellonian University)

Capturing (Un)Similar Perspectives: A Reflexive Public Reason for Energy Transition in Taiwan and China.

Denise Naicker (SOAS University of London)

The Co-production of Nuclear Technology and World Order

Nicole Bassoff (Harvard STS)

In Amazon We Trust?: Constituting the Urban Digital Economy at Amazon HQ2

11:00

Roundtable on Teaching STS

Christopher Lawrence (Georgetown University), Margo Boenig-Liptsin (ETH Zürich), Kasper Schiølin (Aarhus University)

12:00

Lunch

13:00

Session 5: Making States of Knowledge

Chair: Sebastian Pfotenhauer (Technical University Munich)

Lissandro Botelho (Amazonas Federal Institute)

Sociopolitical and Environmental Issues in Economic Development Policies in the Brazilian Amazon

Sridipta Ghatak (University of California, Irvine)

Claiming the State: Environmental Knowledge and Political Identity Formation in India

Sushant Kumar (Northeastern University)

Politics of Knowledge Making and Construction of the Small Family Norm in India

Pablo Duran (School of Public Health, University of Buenos Aires)

Building Discourses and Institutions around Infant Feeding Science and Technology

15:00

Coffee

15:30

Session 6: Ethics and Technology    

Chair: Melanie Smallman (University College London)

Samantha Vanderslott (University of Oxford)

Philanthropy as Technoscientific World-making: Effective Altruism’s Interventions in Neglected Tropical Diseases, Cultured Meat, and Artificial Intelligence Safety

Konstantinos Konstantis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)

Engineering societies and policies regarding technology ethics: The case of IEEE

Sofie van der Maarel (Radboud University & Netherlands Defense Academy)

Negotiating legitimacy through imaginaries: information warfare and competing perceptions of ‘what’s right’ in a Dutch Army innovation hub

Nina Frahm (School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University)

Toward an ‘Ever Closer Union’: The Making of AI Ethics in the EU

Ajmalkhan Areethala (Harvard University)

Can there be Ethical Geoengineering? Doing Solar Radiation Modification in an Unequal World

17:30

Adjourn

18:00

Conference Dinner (Kennedy School)

9:00

Coffee

9:30

Session 7: Energy Transitions

Chair: Stephen Hilgartner (Cornell University)

Khaoula Bengezi (York University)

Continuities of International Neoliberal Extractivist Logics in Morocco’s Shift Towards Renewable Energy

Thea Jung (University of Cambridge)

Claims to a ‘systemic’ view on climate change mitigation: An in-depth case study of the role of an incumbent corporation in decarbonising the cement industry

Aviram Sharma (University of Vigo, Spain)

“Power to the People”? Debating Energy Democracy from the Margins

Jens Marquardt (Technical University of Darmstadt)

How Greens Turn Grey: Taming Energy Transition Imaginaries

11:30

Closing Reflections

12:15

SDN 2023 Farewells

12:30

Summer School Lunch & Final Wrap-up Session

16:00

Summer School Farewells