Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard

Events

STS Circle

The STS Circle at Harvard meets weekly during the academic semester. For Fall 2025, all meetings are planned to take place in person on Mondays, from 12:15-2:00 p.m., in CGIS South S354, 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.

Spring 2026

» 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.

With the advent of the AI age, we face a constitutional crisis, not merely a regulatory vacuum. Private technology companies have evolved into "digital sovereigns"—entities that exercise quasi-governmental power over speech, commerce, and civic life without shouldering the constitutional obligations that bind governments. The First Amendment was designed to protect speakers from government censorship, but it says nothing about private algorithms that determine which voices get heard and which get buried. This structural "First Amendment mismatch" between eighteenth-century constitutional frameworks and twenty-first-century digital reality threatens democratic self-governance itself. Drawing on archival research, internal corporate documents, and interviews with industry leaders, the book traces how Section 230 created a governance framework beyond constitutional safeguards, examines how this misalignment has compromised privacy, autonomy, and integrity, and presents competing visions for our digital future—dominarchy or democratic renovation.

Register here

Co-sponsored by Harvard University Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University Center for the Environment (A Center of the Salata Institute), and the McQuillan Institute.

» Lecture series archive

Workshops and Panels

This J-term workshop brings together students from across the University to explore the interplay between knowledge, expertise, and democratic decision-making. It addresses how questions of power, policy, law, and politics play out in tandem with scientific and technological developments. Sessions introduce foundational concepts from the discipline of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to analyze the institutional and political authority of science and technology in contemporary societies.  Over three days, we will explore how societies can seek to construct reliable forms of knowledge in an era plagued by skepticism, distrust of authority, and political polarization. Post-Enlightenment, societies counted on science and technology to provide democratically acceptable justifications for  policy decisions. The complexities of contemporary social problems motivated widespread delegations of power to experts. Yet the same sciences and technologies have increasingly come to be perceived as “the problem” rather than “the solution.” For example, as modern technologies have decentralized information provision more than ever before, expert claims have become increasingly contested. Rifts concerning facts accompany growing political polarization, especially in the United States.  To make sense of contemporary frictions and future avenues for democratic governance, participants will work together to discuss a set of readings, current controversies from recent news articles, and each other’s research-in-progress. No prior experience in STS required.

» Workshops and panels archive

Program news

STS Fellow Pariroo Rattan recently defended her dissertation, "A Marketplace for Populism: The Moral Politics of Digitization in India's Informal Economy," joining Nicole and Hilton to complete our trio of outstanding newly minted doctors.

Congratulations to our extraordinary STS Fellows Nicole West Bassoff and Hilton Simmet, the first graduates to hold a PhD in Public Policy on the Science, Technology and Policy Studies track! Nicole's dissertation is titled "Can Cities Be Smart? Urban Governance in the Digital Age," and Hilton's is "Just Economics: Inequality and Political Culture in Cross-National Perspective."

Two STS Undergraduate Fellows received a Hoopes Prize for their senior theses — Katie Burstein with “The Body Restored: Constructions of the Patient in the Cult of Asclepius,” and Emil Massad with “We Never Said You Weren’t Exposed: Risk in the Aftermath of the Train Derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.”

Join us for the Global Observatory for Genome Editing International Summit on May 21-23. Register and learn more here.

Register here for a panel discussion on April 24 regarding recent changes to federal research funding, co-hosted with the Harvard Griffin GSAS Science Policy Group.

The 2025 STS Undergraduate Essay Prize contest is now open. Submissions are due here by April 14, 2025.

The 2025-2026 STS Fellows application is now OPEN. Application deadline has been extended to March 14, 2025.

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.

» Program news archive