Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard

Harvard Kennedy School of Government | Harvard University

News

Below is some of the news relating to the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard Kennedy School.

Jump to: 2024 :: 2023 :: 2022 :: 2021 :: 2020 :: 2019 :: 2018 :: 2017 :: 2016 :: 2015 :: 2014 :: 2013 :: 2012 :: 2011 :: 2010 :: 2009 :: 2008 :: 2007 :: 2006

2024

STS Undergraduate Essay Prize Contest is now OPEN. Essays must be submitted by Thursday, April 18. Follow this link to learn more and submit your essay.

Spring Science & Democracy Lecture “Fool Me Twice: AI and Surveillance Capitalism’s Second Coming” presented by Shoshana Zuboff, noted author, professor, social psychologist, philosopher, and scholar on Wednesday, April 10, 2024, 5:00-7:00 PM, Harvard University Science Center, Hall D. This is an in-person event only. Register for this event here.

The STS Program's very own Michael Cheng in the news. Follow this link to read the article.

Past STS Fellow Makoto "Mak" Takahashi shares his latest publication which came from his time at the Harvard STS Program. Read the publication HERE.

2022

The STS program celebrated its 20th anniversary with a symposium on Science, Technology and the Human Future, Nov 3-5, 2022.

Read the Future Humans anthology, a multi-media speculative fiction curated for the 20th Anniversary of the STS program.

Mak Takahashi's exhibit, Picturing the Invisible, was awarded the 2022 Ziman award by the European Association for the Study of Science & Technology (EASST).

“We need more urgently to seize back the political discourse on life that has empowered this court to present a massively retrograde decision as if it stands on moral high ground,” says Sheila Jasanoff about the recent Supreme Court ruling on abortion.

Sheila Jasanoff wins Holberg Prize, one of the the world’s most prestigious awards in the social sciences.

This year's Science and Democracy Network meeting was held at Harvard from July 27-30, 2022. Check the SDN website for meeting details.

Congratulations to Annelisa Kingsbury Lee for winning this year's STS Undergraduate Essay Prize for her paper on "Ultrasupercritical Coal as Viral Technology: The Chinese Case."

Honorable mentions for this year's STS Undergraduate Essay Prize were Lauren Fadiman for her essay "5G Conspiracy Theories and Biopolitics in the Vernacular," and Emma Forbes for her paper on "Commodifying and Depoliticizing Robot Dogs."

If you missed the latest Science and Democracy Lecture with Marcia McNutt, President of the National Academy of Sciences, you can rewatch it here.

2021

STS@HKS welcomes applications to its non-stipendiary pre- and postdoctoral fellowship program for AY 2022-2023. Please visit the STS@HKS Fellows page for more information and an application link.

This year's STS Graduate Research Seminar on "Beyond "Don't be evil': Embedding your research in social contexts," will be held from Jan 18-21. Learn more and register.

Read about STS in the Environmental Studies and Public Policy (ESPP) program and Sheila Jasanoff's work to spotlight what makes the environment a counterintuitively political subject in her teaching.

Listen to Sheila Jasanoff discuss science, technology and policy in the latest episode of HKS PolicyCast.

STS@Harvard director Sheila Jasanoff has been elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Registration is now open for this year's Science and Democracy Network Meeting, to be held virtually June 23-25. Full details can be found on the meeting page.

Read about the winner and three honorable mentions of this year's Undergraduate STS Essay Prize Competition here.

Sheila Jasanoff has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Abstracts are now being accepted from graduate researchers in STS and neighboring fields for the October 29-30 workshop, Disrupted Lives: Linking, De-linking and the Infrastructures of Recovery. Please submit via this online form. A full workshop description is here.

The Harvard-Cornell Comparative Covid Response (CompCoRe) study has released an interim report of its findings. Find coverage on the Kennedy School website here.

The Global Observatory for Genome Editing and STS@Harvard co-present the panel discussion, "Democratic Imaginations at the Frontiers of Science and Technology," on Friday, April 16, 2-4pm EDT. Speaker and registration information here.

We are accepting submissions for our annual Undergraduate STS Essay Prize Competition through Friday, April 9. Details can be found here.

Sheila Jasanoff honored with Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award.

The Global Observatory for Genome Editing is accepting applications for a Postdoctoral Researcher until April 15, 2021. Please find more complete information here.

Harvard faculty are invited to submit applications for the new round of Trust in Science Project funding. Deadline is March 15, 2021. Read the full request for proposals and submit your application.

The Comparative COVID-19 Response project has released its interim report as part of the Futures Forum on Preparedness. Watch the video of their presentation.

Come watch the Program unveil a first-of-its-kind, 23-nation comparative study of responses to COVID-19, undertaken by 78 researchers from 47 institutions, that outlines lessons learned across nations and recommendations to improve public health interventions. January 12-13 at the Futures Forum on Preparedness. Register to attend.

2020

We are now accepting applications for non-stipendiary fellows for the 2021-2022 academic year. Please find more complete information here. The application deadline is January 31, 2021.

Read Prof. Jasanoff's latest on the pandemic: "Pathologies of Liberty: Public Health Sovereignty and the Political Subject in the Covid-19 Crisis" in Droit, Sciences, and Technologies.

Please join us for "Testing Times for Constitutional Democracy," the second STS@Tea event. This moderated panel discussion will take place Thursday, Dec. 3, 3:30-5pm EST. Please register for this Zoom event here. More info on this panel can be found here.

Trust in Science Project, a collaboration between STS@Harvard and the Harvard Data Science Project, presents A Roundtable on "Trust in Science, Trust in Democracy" on Monday, Dec. 7, 1-2pm EST. Please register here on Zoom. You can find an event abstract here.

Former STS fellow Igo Hartogsohn tells of the social, historical, and cultural forces that forged America's psychedelic experience of the 1950s and 1960s in his new book, American Trip: Set, Setting, and the Psychedelic Experience in the Twentieth Century, recently published by MIT Press.

The STS Program will hold a Virtual Open House at 4:30-6pm EDT on Thursday, October 29, for current and prospective STS Secondary Field members and all others interested in the intersections between science, technology and society. Hear from affiliated faculty, learn more about the STS Secondary Field, and explore resources available for furthering your engagement with STS from any disciplinary perspective. Please fill out this RSVP form if you plan to attend. Zoom link to be sent the day before the event.  

MIT Press recently published STS Fellow Zara Mirmalek's book, Making Time on Mars, an examination of how the daily work of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers was organized across three sites on two planets using local Mars time. The book grew out of her work as part of the mission team.

Submissions are welcome for the new STS & Crisis online media project. These can be short written pieces or interviews. Read the CFP.

Prof. Jasanoff was recently awarded an NSF RAPID Grant for "A Comparative Study of Expertise for Policy in the COVID-19 Pandemic" in conjunction with Prof. Stephen Hilgartner at Cornell.

STS Fellow Sam Weiss Evans recently published a Policy Forum in Science on "Embrace Experimentation in Biosecurity Governance" with 17 co-authors, calling for the value in an experimental approach to governance. Read more.

Three graduating seniors took home the honors in the 10th annual Undergraduate STS Essay Prize Competition. Eve Driver’s Narrating Apocalypse: Cape Town’s “Day Zero” and the Politics of Climate Change Attribution was the winner. Leena Ambady’s Environmentalists Against Science?: The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and the Recombinant DNA Threat and Sandra Ojeaburu’s Deconstructing Medicalization: The Collision of Birthing Modalities in Black Maternal Health earned  honorable mentions.  

2019

The STS Program deeply regrets the passing of James J. McCarthy, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography, on December 11, 2019.  Jim was a devoted friend and supporter of the Program from its inception in 2002.  Tributes to Jim, testifying to his impact at and far beyond Harvard, can be found here.

The 2019 Newsletter is now available!  Check out the STS Program's highlights from this past year here.

The Spring 2020 STS Circle schedule is now available.  Join us Mondays, 12:15-2:00pm in CGIS S050, 1730 Cambridge Street! 

STS Fellow Kasper Schioelin has a new article out in Social Studies of Science on "Revolutionary Dreams: Future Essentialism and the Sociotechnical Imaginary of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in Denmark."

STS Fellow Stefan Schaefer and Mark Lawrence recently published a piece in Science on the "Promises and Perils of the Paris Agreement." 

Congratulations to the winner of the STS Undergraduate Prize Competition, Belen Mella, and the honorable mentions, Matt Hoisch and Julia Fine! Watch the videos here to learn more about their winning papers.

Former STS Fellow and secondary fielder Ian McGonigle was just awarded the Association of Middle East Anthropology Dissertation Award for his dissertation "Genomic Citizenship: Peoplehood and State in Israel and Qatar."  

2018

The 2018 Newsletter is now available!  Check out the STS Program's highlights from this past year here.

Join the Harvard STS Program as non-stipendiary fellow for 2019-2020! Apply here by January 31, 2018.

Check out these two articles in Trends in Biotechnology on building capacity for a global genome editing observatory written by the organizers and key participants of Editorial Aspirations: Human Integrity at the Frontiers of Biology. For more on building a global observatory for gene editing, revisit Sheila Jasanoff and Ben Hurlbut's Nature article

STS Fellow Christopher Lawrence, recently published an op-ed in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on the lessons the US has learned from previous diplomacy with North Korea. Read it here.

Congratulations to Blake McGhghy '17, winner of our 2018 STS Undergraduate Essay Prize competitionHonorable mentions were also awarded to Bruno Moguel Gallegos '18 and Augusta Conway '18.

Missed our Science and Democracy Lecture with Michael Ignatieff? The video is available now.

Couldn't make it to Climate Science in a Time of Political Disruption with Gina McCarthy? The video is up here.

Interested to hear what Rick Doblin, Dan Wikler, Nicolas Langlitz and Ido Hartogsohn had to say about the "The Altered Mind: Psychedelics and the Ethics of Mind Enhancement?" Watch the video here

Missed our Science and Democracy Lecture with Sunita Narain? The video is now available.

2017

The 2017 Newsletter is now available! See our program's highlights from the past year here.

Congratulations to the winners of the STS Undergraduate Essay Prize Competition: Jacob Meisel, Leib Celnik, and Sophia Lugo! Check out their videos here

Join the Harvard STS Program as non-stipendiary fellow for 2018-2019! Apply by January 31, 2018.

Apply for a PhD in Public Policy with a special field in Science and Technology Policy Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School! Deadline: December 1st.

Congratulations to the winners of the STS Undergraduate Essay Prize Competition: Jacob Meisel, Leib Celnik, and Sophia Lugo! Check out their videos here.

Couldn't make our Science and Democracy Lecture with Carlos Moedas? Video of the lecture is now available here.

Missed Editorial Aspirations: Human Integrity at the Frontiers of BiologyWatch the video of the sessions and read the event report.

Curious about our public lecture with Jonathon Porritt on "Nuclear Chimeras: Britain's Slow Death as a Nuclear Power"? You can find the video here.

We're pleased to announce a new STS blog - First 100 Days: Narratives of Normalization and Disruption.

2016

Wondering what we were up to in 2016? Our Fall 2016 Newsletter is now available!

Missed The Expertise and Public Trust Project's inaugural event "What Should Democracies Know?" featuring post-election reflections by Archon Fung, Ned Hall, Jane Mansbridge, David Kennedy and Sheila Jasanoff? The video and event summary are now available.

Missed our Science and Democracy Lecture with Rachel Kyte on Looking up: How coalitions of bottom-up organizations are driving action for sustainable development? Watch the video here.

Sheila Jasanoff's latest book The Ethics of Invention: Technology and the Human Future is now available for order at Amazon and at the publisher's link.

A summary of our workshop "The Molecularization of Identity: Science and Subjectivity in the 21st Century," is now available in Genetics ResearchThe summary was written by workshop organizers, and past STS Fellows, Ian McGonigle and Ruha Benjamin

Sheila Jasanoff was recently featured on a University of Melbourne podcast on "Twin Engines of Truth? How Science and Law Interact to Construct our World."

We're pleased to announce this year's STS Undergraduate Prize Competition winners: Nicole Bassoff, Leah Singer, and Emma Woo! Watch videos where the winners discuss their work here.

Missed our April 20th Science and Democracy panel with Yaron Ezrahi, Andy Stirling, Shiv Visvanathan, and Jane Mansbridge on "The Elusive Demos: Democracy in the Digital Age?" The video is now available. 

April 29-30th, we hosted"The Molecularization of Identity: Science and Subjectivity in the 21st Century," co-organized by current and former fellows, Ruha Benjamin and Ian McGonigle.

Former STS Fellow S.M. Amadae recently published Prisoners of Reason: Game Theory and Neoliberal Political Economy

On Wednesday, April 20th, we hosted a panel discussion with Yaron Ezrahi, Andy Stirling, Shiv Visvanathan, and Jane Mansbridge on "The Elusive Demos: Democracy in the Digital Age. Watch this space for the video when it becomes available!

Calling all Harvard undergraduates: submit your paper or thesis chapter for consideration in our STS Undergraduate Prize CompetitionDeadline: April 8th.

Ian McGonigle, a current STS Fellow and Harvard, Anthropology/Middle Eastern Studies doctoral student, recently published " two articles in Genetics Research. Find them here and here.

Join us February 24th for a book launch and reception in honor of David Kennedy's new book, A World of Struggle: How Power, Law, and Expertise Shape Global Political Economy.

2015

Our 2015 Newsletter is now available!  

Missed our Science and Democracy Lecture with William D. Nordhaus? The video is now available!

Check out this article in The Harvard Crimson on the state of STS@Harvard!

Former STS Fellow Tolu Odumosu and Venky Narayanamurti have a new article in Physics Today on the social science of creativity and research practice.

Our non-stipendiary fellowship application is now live. Apply by January 31st to join us as a fellow for the 2016-2017 academic year!

Ben Hurlbut, Kris Saha, and Sheila Jasanoff recently published an article on CRISPR in Issues.

The Fall 2015 STS Circle schedule is out now! Join us on Mondays, 12:15-2:00PM in Pierce 100F (unless otherwise noted).

Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power, edited by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim, builds on research conducted as part of a National Science Foundation grant and was recently published by University of Chicago Press.

Spring 2015 STS Fellow Aleksandar Rankovic recently published an article in Science.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2015 STS Undergraduate Essay Prize Competition: Hilton Simmet, Bran Shim, and Rachel Taylor!

Former STS Fellow and current Secondary Field student, Ian McGoniglerecently published articles in Ethnos and in the Journal of Law and the Biosciences.

Registration is now open for the 14th Annual Meeting of the Science and Democracy Network

Missed last month's Science and Democracy Lecture with Peter Thiel?  The video is now available.

Science and Democracy: Making Knowledge and Making Power in the Biosciences and Beyond,  edited by Stephen Hilgartner, Clark Miller, and Rob Hagendijk, features contributions by many Harvard STS fellows and visitors.

On Monday, May 18th, our STS Fellows will host Visual Framings of Changing Orders, an exhibit of their work.

Join us April 28th, 2015 for Science and Its Publics: Conversations on Accountability, organized by some of this year's visiting fellows!

This Friday, April 24th,  we're pleased to host Francois Gemenne for a special seminar on Anthropocene and Its Victims: How We Name Those Displaced by Environmental Changes.

Join us April 16-17th, 2015 for Earthworks Unlimited: Problems and Prospects of Geoengineering, cosponsored by the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

The STS Program will host the 14th Annual Meeting of the Science and Democracy NetworkJune 25-27, 2015. Check out the call for abstracts to learn how you might present at this year's annual meeting!

Calling all undergraduates and undergraduate advisors! We are now accepting submissions for the 2015 Undergraduate STS Essay Prize Competition.

The STS Circle is back! Take a look at our Spring 2015 schedule

2014

See what we were up to in 2014! Check out our annual newsletter.

Our non-stipendiary fellowship application is now live. Apply by January 31st to join us as a fellow for the 2015-2016 academic year!

Missed our recent Science and Democracy Lecture with Martin Rees on  "Catastrophic Risks: The Downsides of Advancing Technology"? His lecture is available in PDF here and a video is available here.

Spring 2014 STS Fellow Ari Barell recently published Engineer king: David Ben-Gurion, Science and Nation Building

The STS Circle is back! Join us Mondays, 12:15-2PM in Pierce 100F.

STS Summer School: Science and Governance at the Frontiers of Life was held held July 27th-August 1st. The website for the school's students and faculty is located here.

Congratulations to our 2014 STS Undergraduate Essay Prize winner Lily Ostrer and honorable mentions Sandra Korn and Danny Wilson! Watch them discuss the relationship between STS and their winning essays here.

The video from our April 15th Science and Democracy Lecture with Craig Calhoun is now available.

Missed our recent lectures by Ken Feinberg and Alfred Nordmann? The videos are here and here.

Sheila Jasanoff answered questions about STS at Harvard and elsewhere in this month's issue of HKS Magazine.

See what we were up to in 2013! Check out our annual newsletter.

Join us on April 24-25th for Science, Identity, and Ethnicity: States and Citizens in Global Knowledge Regimes featuring a keynote by Nadia Abu El-Haj.

Calling all undergraduates and undergraduate advisors! We are now accepting submissions for the 2014 Undergraduate STS Essay Prize Competition.

The deadline for applications for the STS Summer School: Science and Governance at the Frontiers of Life has been extended until April 11th.

Tania Simoncelli,one of our recent Science and Democracy Lecture panelists and friend of Harvard STS, has been profiled in Nature.

The Spring 2014 STS Circle schedule is now available.

Join the STS Program as a Non-Stipendiary Research Fellow for 2014-2015! Apply by January 31, 2014.

2013

Tania Simoncelli,one of our recent Science and Democracy Lecture panelists and friend of Harvard STS, has been profiled in Nature.

Join the STS Program as a Non-Stipendiary Research Fellow for 2014-2015! Apply by January 31, 2014.

See what we were up to in 2013! Check out our annual newsletter.

Aziza Ahmed's paper, presented at the STS/IGLP workshop, was selected as a winner in the American Association of Law Schools New Voices in Gender Studies competition.

Missed our Science and Democracy Lecture with Chris Hansen last week? The video is now available here.

TheSTS Next 20 web portal is now live! Visit the site for vignettes, perspectives, and a map of current STS training centers.

Sheila Jasanoff's essay collection, Science and Public Reason, is now available in paperback from Routledge.

STS Fellow Zara Mirmalek is conducting fieldwork aboard the E/V Nautilus as part of her National Science Foundation funded research project. You can watch a live feed of the ship and the ongoing research here.

Stefan Helmreich and Noam Chomsky's keynotes from the Multispecies World Conference is now available here and here.  

Missed our recent Science and Democracy Lecture with Paul Nurse? The video is now available here.

STS Fellow Ruha Benjamin's vignette, "Beyond Tokenistic Inclusion; Science, Citizenship, and Changing the Questions" is up on the Huffington Post!

The Science and Democracy Network is hosting its annual meeting June 30-July 2nd, 2013 in Cambridge, MA. Check out the program and register here.

Join us April 25-26th for "Navigating a Multispecies World: A Graduate Student Conference on the Species Turn" featuring Stefan Helmreich and Noam Chomksy. Reserve your seat here.

On April 18th and 19th, we're co-sponsoring "Facts and Futures: Expertise Between Science and Law" with the Institute for Global Law and Policy at HLS. For more information and to RSVP, visit our event page.

Calling all undergraduates and undergraduate advisors! We are now accepting abstracts for the 2013 Undergraduate STS Essay Prize Competition. For details, please visit the announcement page.

Join us for "Energy Politics; After Carbon Democracy" with Timothy Mitchell (Columbia University) on March 5th at 4:00PM. See the event page for more details.

Applications are now invited for STS Program Non-stipendiary Fellowships with the Harvard STS Program. For details, please visit Fellows Program.

Join us on February 19th at 4:30PM for a discussion on Andrew Jewett's recent book featuring Theodore PorterSheila Jasanoff, and Charles Rosenberg.

2012

Our Director, Sheila Jasanoff, and former fellow, Mariachiara Tallacchini, were quoted in Nature on Italy's L'Aquila verdict. The Committee on the Use of Social Science Knowledge Public Policy, featuring Jasanoff, recently published "Using Science as Evidence in Public Policy."

The video of our recent Science and Democracy Lecture with Phillip A. Sharp (MIT) is now available here.

Our Fall STS Circle schedule has been announced! Please note the new location for the Fall, Pierce 100F at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

We're pleased to announce that Routledge has published a collection of essays by our Director, Sheila Jasanoff. More information on this new volume can be found here.

The videos from Anne Wojcicki's Science and Democracy Lecture and the Architectures for Life Workshop are now available!

In November 2011, we held a workshop on "The Constitutional Foundations of Bioethics: A Cross-National Comparison," generously funded by a grant from the Greenwall Foundation. Read the coverage from our cosponsor, The Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School, on page 15 of their newsletter.

Congratulations to Will Rafey, winner of the STS Undergraduate Prize, and to Melissa Oppenheim and Adrianna Stanley, who received honorable mentions in our annual essay competition!

The video from Anne Wojcicki's Science and Democracy lecture is now available! Follow the event coverage in the Wall Street Journal and Harvard Gazette.

STS Fellows Mads Dahl Gjefsen has been profiled by the Norwegian newspaper GD. In it, he describes his on-going research on carbon capture and storage and talks about the conversations taking place in Harvard's STS Program.  

2011

On April 30, 2012, we will be hosting "Human Nature in the Public Sphere", a symposium with John Carson (Michigan) and Baruch Fishhoff (Carnegie Mellon); co-sponsored with the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard.

The video from Anne Wojcicki's Science and Democracy lecture is now available! Follow the event coverage in the Wall Street Journal and Harvard Gazette.

STS Fellows Mads Dahl Gjefsen has been profiled by the Norwegian newspaper GD. In it, he describes his on-going research on carbon capture and storage and talks about the conversations taking place in Harvard's STS Program.            

2010

The Program on STS has produced a Yearbook for 2008-2010. This booklet contains information about the people, events, and initatives associated with the Program on STS during this time. The program has also released a Fall 2010 newsletter on its most recent activities.

2009

The STS Program and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences welcomed their first joint post-doc, Samuel Evans, who recently received his D.Phil. from Oxford University and works on the politics of international export regulations of "dual-use" technologies.

The STS Program welcomed the first Bassetti Foundation fellow, Maggie Curnutte, who works on direct to consumer marketing of genetic tests. The Bassetti Foundation encourages research and dissemination related to responsible innovation in science and technology.

Over the summer, the STS Program hosted the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Science and Democracy Network. The Ninth Annual Meeting will be held in the UK, in collaboration with the Royal Society, on June 28-30, 2010.

On May 7-8, the STS Program observed the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow's lecture on the "Two Cultures" with a panel discussion and workshop on the theme "Cultures in Common." For a report of the event, see "Still 'two cultures' but who's on top?"

The Science and Democracy Lecture Series hosted a talk by Raghuram Rajan on December 2 and a panel discussion on the theme of "Connected Publics" on March 11.

On March 1, 2009, Sheila Jasanoff received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study the impact of the 1993 Supreme Court decision Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. on the production and use of scientific evidence.

2008

In November, The STS Program held a workshop in Cambridge entitled "Sociotechnical Imaginaries: Cross-National Comparisons" supported by a grant from the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. The workshop complemented the Program's NSF-funded research project on the same theme.

On November 12, the Science and Democracy Lecture Series hosted a talk by Ulrich BeckHarold Varmus spoke in the series on April 3.

In October, STS Director Sheila Jasanoff delivered the Messenger Lectures at Cornell University on the theme "After Enlightenment: Rethinking Science's Place in Democracy."

In August, the STS Program collaborated with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the European School of Molecular Medicine (SEMM) in Milan to host a summer school on Deconstructing and Reconstructing Life: From Classification to Design.

On June 29-July 1, the STS Program hosted the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Science and Democracy Network.

In June, the STS Program received a generous grant from the Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) to support varied activities at the intersection of STS and environmental studies.

2007

In September, Sheila Jasanoff and STS Fellow Sang-Hyun Kim received a grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct a comparative study of "sociotechnical imaginaries" in the United States, South Korea, and Germany.

In June, the STS Program collaborated with the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge to co-sponsor the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Science and Democracy Network.

In April, the STS Program inaugurated the Science and Democracy Lecture Series, funded by a generous private donor, with a talk by Yaron Ezrahi on April 9. The second event in the series was a lecture by William Cronon on November 29.

2006

In the fall, the STS Program inaugurated the STS Circle, a weekly forum for interdisciplinary conversations about contemporary issues in science and technology that are relevant to people in fields such as anthropology, history of science, sociology, STS, law, government, public policy, and the natural sciences.

On December 1, 2006, Sheila Jasanoff received an honorary degree from the University of Twente, Netherlands. It was the first time in the university's 45-year history that they so honored a woman. Press releases from the University of Twente have been archived here: August 31 (Dutch), September 7 (English), November 9 (Dutch), and December 7 (Dutch).