Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard

Events

STS Circle

The STS Circle at Harvard meets weekly during the academic semester. For Spring 2025, 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 2025

» 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 2025: Around the world, rupture and resistance seem to have taken over from the orderly routines of democracy. Slogans such as No Kings, Stand Up for Science, Je suis Marine (I am Marine), 스탑 더 스틸 (Stop the Steal), and Bharat Jodo (Unite India) challenge ruling authorities—while implicitly imagining different states of the world and ways in which lives should be lived. For STS scholars, such moments of rupture signal simultaneous breakdowns in shared knowledge and social order. Whether through moves to make some lives matter more or to make entire countries “great” and “healthy” again, advocates for change are asserting ideas of legitimate expertise, good citizenship, and accountable governance. Science and technology are inseparable from these notions of how to make, or remake, good societies. Public health interventions constrain civil liberties and civic duties, digital transformations and green investments promise equitable futures, and government spending cuts aim to demote particular forms of knowledge and public benefit. Increasingly fraught disputes in the public square demand deeper reflection from STS scholars about the epistemic and political norms that bind ruling authorities to the people. Amidst moves to dismantle, defund, and challenge once taken-for-granted institutions, the 6th GRiSTS conference invites applicants to explore how actors envision and contest what makes for the right forms of knowledge and collective life. We welcome proposals that engage with questions such as: What knowledge and expertise do citizens—and their rulers—draw on to identify transgressions and injustices? How do calls for resistance reflect imaginaries of stable order, and, correspondingly, contest the legitimacy of existing institutions (e.g., courts, universities, technology companies)? To the extent that such institutions are seen as custodians of knowledge or justice, what forms of delegation and deference underwrite their authority, and what accounts for their vulnerability or loss of trust vis-à-vis their clients or publics?

» 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