Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard

Events

STS Circle

The STS Circle at Harvard meets weekly during the academic semester. For Fall 2024, all meetings are planned to take place in person on Mondays, from 12:15-2:00 p.m., in CGIS South S050, 1730 Cambridge Street unless otherwise noted. Sandwich lunches will be provided. To receive the abstract and bio for each talk, and to register to attend, please join our mailing list.

Fall 2024

» More information and past schedules

Science & Democracy Lecture Series

Once a semester, the STS Program, with co-sponsorship from other local institutions, hosts an installation in its Science and Democracy Lecture Series.

This symposium introduces the work of the McQuillan Institute for Science, Technology and the Human Future through a collaboration with the Program on Science, Technology and Society (STS) at Harvard. The program highlights how STS scholarship, and research on science and technology more broadly, can inform some of the most important challenges currently facing human societies, from digital and climate governance to rethinking the role of technical expertise in law and democratic politics. We close with a reflection on reimagining the future of technological societies through conversations between artists and social scientists. Register and view the full program here.

» Lecture series archive

Workshops and Panels

GRiSTS 2024: In 2024, questions of the future of democracy have taken center stage as perhaps never before. More than one-quarter of the people on earth were called to the polls, and the image of two billion voters on the move appears as a celebration of the democratic franchise. Yet we are also flooded with fears of authoritarian rule, anti-democratic demagogues, misinformation, election tampering, and specters of social-media induced violence. Elections in this context have come to be labeled existential: a series of referenda on the continued existence of democracy itself. The tensions between these narratives, of democracy on the march and democracy rushing toward its own destruction, emerge in stark binaries: truth against lies, debate against violence, reason against irrationality, and institutions and the rule of law against populist anarchy. These binaries remind us that the sources of legitimacy in our political institutions extend beyond voting. They get at the heart of how political order is constituted by, and constitutive of, shared ideas about right knowledge, good public reason, and legitimate technologies of self-rule. For its fifth edition, the GRiSTS organizing committee invites abstracts that deal with how the sciences (including social sciences) and technology structure the realm of politics, re-configure democratic life, and help to produce new imaginations of a global polity. Comparative projects are particularly welcome. Prospective presenters should submit abstracts of up to 350 words.

Co-sponsored by the Harvard Center for the Environment and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

» Workshops and panels archive

Program news

Register to attend the launch symposium on October 25 for the McQuillan Institute for Science, Technology and the Human Future.

Sheila Jasanoff was honored with the Phi Beta Kappa Alpha Iota Excellence in Teaching prize.

Congratulations to the winner of the STS Undergraduate Essay Prize, Andrew Charroux, and to the honorable mentions, Joshua Fang and Maya Rosen! Watch videos here to learn more about their winning papers.

Read about Harvard STS Fellow Michael Cheng (HLS '24) in this feature, Composing a Path, Bar by Bar.

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

Sheila Jasanoff contributed to a recent essay collection by the HKS Carr Center on Human Rights Policy commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The complete publication, entitled “Making a Movement: The History and Future of Human Rights,” can be found here, with a copy of Jasanoff’s essay on science, technology and human rights here.

The Conference on AI & Democracy began on November 30th with a keynote lecture Artificial Intimacy: What are People For? by MIT Professor Sherry Turkle. Panels on December 1st and 2nd brought together leading voices on AI and related policy issues with prominent figures from government, civil society, academia, and the private sector. Featured speakers included Liz Shuler (AFL-CIO), Jody Williams (Nobel Laureate), Rep. Ted Lieu, and former Mayor of NYC Bill de Blasio. Learn more here.

Workshop: Regulatory Challenges in Technological Societies - Dialogue between the U.S. and Brazil, Friday, April 7, 2023, 9:30 -5:00 PM, HKS, Malkin Penthouse, 4th Floor. Click here to learn more.

Spring Science & Democracy lecture is back in-person since 2019. AI for CITIES or CITIES for AI? Who should decide? with Keynote lecturer Bill de Blasio, former Mayor of New York City, Tuesday, March 28, 2023, 5:00 - 7:00 PM, Harvard Science Center, Hall A, 1 Oxford St, Cambridge, MA. Click here to learn more.

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

» Program news archive