Pre-conference Workshop

Doing STS at the margin: frustrations, possibilities and visions for young scholars in an interdisciplinary field

We would like to invite you to participate in a pre-conference mini-workshop for PhD students before the opening of the Swedish STS conference 2016 at the Department of Service management, Campus Helsingborg, Lund University on 19-29 May.

STS is an intrinsically interdisciplinary research field, with contributions from very diverse disciplinary backgrounds and research fields. Being a PhD student or early career scholar in STS means often finding oneself on the margin of disciplines, specialities, journals, conferences, and so on. This marginal existence may present us with some special forms of frustrations in terms of for example disciplinary identity, publishing outlets, research funding, etc. Being located on the margin of established disciplines or research fields may also mean new possibilities and opportunities. Furthermore, the existence of an STS community, journals, conferences and even PhD programmes, is in some sense a counteracting force to all this.

The aim of this workshop is first to create a platform for PhD students to collaboratively engage key themes for pursuing STS research together with established STS scholars with experience from planning research projects, grant applications, collaborations within and outside academia, and interdisciplinary journeys. The workshops seeks to address the different aspects of what doing STS in between may means in practice, and provide a forum for sharing experiences, strategies and visions of the future of STS. The workshop is also a good way to get to know and exchange ideas with other young researchers in Sweden and beyond.

Some of the possible themes include:

• General challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinarity
• Networking, collaboration and disciplinary cultures
• Research funding in between disciplines
• PhD studies in STS: STS-programmes vs doing STS in other disciplines
• STS in collaboration with policymakers, activists, industry or popular science
• Careers inside and outside academia
• Recent trends and the future of doing STS
• Points of common concern, interest or future collaboration

Format:

We have invited two early career STS researchers to present some initial reflections in a brief introduction, to be followed by an open discussion of the topics brought up.

Registration:

Participation in the workshop is free of charge, but registration through the conference registration page is required. The workshop is arranged by
Anders Hylmö, who is happy to answer any questions sent to
anders [dot] hylmo [at] soc [dot] lu [dot] se (anders.hylmo [at] soc.lu.se).