Assist-UK2019: Association for Studies in Innovation, Science and Technology-UK Annual Conference Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester Manchester, UK, September 9-10, 2019

Science, Technology and Innovation Studies: Critical Inquiries in Theory and Practice

Call for Contributions

The 2019 Conference of the Association invites contributions (papers, panel sessions or alternative session proposals) that examine the state of the art and future contributions of theoretical and practice-based work in STIS. The Conference provides an opportunity for members of the Association to share their current and planned work which will help set a new framework for critical inquiry in the field, as new challenges and opportunities arise for rethinking our approach to substantive, methodological and policy-related developments. How are STIS researchers, groups and centres across the UK and internationally engaging with these issues and seeking new ways in which limited yet powerful modes of thinking can be changed?

The conference will be hosted by the University of Manchester, and held at the Alliance Manchester Business School. 

We welcome session proposals that engage with the following themes:

• Understanding the articulation and tensions between public and private infrastructures
• Sustainability in the context of the global political economy
• Emergent fields and technologies as new knowledge systems and the future of regulatory and governance practice
• Co-production, localism and designing accountable socio-technical systems
• Engagement of STS: the praxis of intervening in/making the world
• UK S&T and Innovation policy: where is it going and why?
• International dimensions of S&T policy
• Cultural and historical analyses: stories, practices and processes
• Automation and artificial intelligence: promise and reality
• Health and medicine: whither ‘precision’?
• Energy systems, transitions and climate change: keeping our heads above water
• STS at the intersection: foregrounding processes and discourses of difference (including racialisation, gendering, dis/ability, ageing)
• Futures: how are they created and how do they shape practices?

Sessions comprise a set of three or four related presentations over 90 minutes. Proposals includes the session title and a short abstract of about 300 words describing the session plus a list of the associated presenters and their titles. In addition, each paper must submit an abstract for their own presentation that begins by listing the session title. We are also open to proposals for alternative format sessions (session duration up to 90 minutes).

Single paper submissions should be in the form of abstracts of up to 250 words. They should include the paper’s main arguments, methods, and contributions to STIS. Papers may address one or more of the themes listed above or be considered for the ‘open’ track.

Deadline for submissions: May 10 2019.

Registration details to follow and will be available on the AsSIST-UK website