PASTIS Research Group – University of Padova
STS Lab – University of Lausanne
STS ITALIA – Italian Society for Science and Technology Studies
is organizing the 6th STS Italia Summer School, “Disentangling Futures: Promises, Scenarios, Experiments“, to be held in Padova (Italy) from September 27th to October 1st, 2022.
The Summer School aims at providing a theoretical, analytical, and methodological toolbox to carry out STS-inspired research into the role of futures in co-producing technoscience and governance, and in reshaping science-technology-society interfaces.
Goals, main topics and aims
In the last decade, Science and Technology Studies (STS) have paid increasing attention to the performative role of “futures”, anticipatory expectations, and “forward-looking statements” in co-defining knowledge-making processes and technological developments. Currently, this broad interest in disentangling the nexus between the future and technoscience flows into several research streams: from the assessment of long-term futures of technological innovation, setting out how future-oriented socio-technical imaginaries act upon real-time technoscientific innovation, up to actionable anticipatory frameworks and normative scenarios adopted to intervene in science, technology and innovation governance and policy-making.
The 6th STS Italia Summer School aims at providing a theoretical, analytical, and methodological toolbox to carry out STS-inspired research into the role of futures in co-producing technoscience and governance, and in reshaping science-technology-society interfaces.
Main themes that will be addressed:
Science-society interface approaches related to the future, including technoscientific expectations, sociotechnical imaginaries, and technological promises;
The role of future scenarios in shaping policies and processes of innovation;
The role of emerging technologies in shaping technoscientific imaginaries and public discourses;
Investigating technoscientific expectations, imaginaries and promises in newspapers and online media;
The relationship between imaginaries and fictional representations in shaping technoscience;
Taking inspiration from art, exhibitions and ‘art/science’ experiments to enhance the study of innovation in the future.
Organisation
The Summer School will be organised around lectures and seminars. To make the coursework more responsive, the participants will be engaged in seminars in which they will investigate the main themes of the Summer School working in small groups, through activities, discussions, inputs and examples. A group of scholars from STS Italia will participate in all activities as facilitators. Moreover, the School will include a guided tour to an exhibition art space in Venice, in order to offer materials and inspiration for workshop activities related to the relationship between art, technoscience and the future. All lectures and seminars will be in English.
CONFIRMED SPEAKERS
| Marc Audétat | (University of Lausanne – CH) |
| Silvia Casini | (University of Aberdeen – UK) |
| Kornelia Konrad | (University of Twente – NL) |
| Federico Neresini | (University of Padova – IT) |
| Barbara Prainsack | (University of Vienna – AT) |
| Philippe Sormani | (University of Lausanne – CH) |
Schedule, costs, and accommodation
All participants are expected to attend the entire duration of the Summer School and a Certificate of Attendance will be provided at the end. The fee for participation is 250 €. The fee includes:
- Access to all lectures and workshops
- Lunches and coffee breaks
- Social dinner
- Welcome aperitif
- A guided tour to an exhibition space in Venice
- A two-month access to TIPS, an online platform for media analysis
Attendants will be responsible to arrange their own accommodation. A list of selected hotels, B&Bs and budget accommodations will be provided to participants.
Who should attend?
This Summer School is intended for PhD students and junior researchers from different fields and disciplines (including science and technology studies, social study of health and medicine, sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, and/or related fields) who are interested in developing a STS sensibility toward this field of study.
The maximum number of participants is limited to 25 people. Candidates will be selected based on their CV and research interests as well as with a view to maintaining a balance of genders and nationalities.
Scholarships
The Summer School includes two different scholarship schemes:
- • Up to 5 scholarships (covering the participation fees) will be available for talented students. Scholarship applicants must send a statement of purpose (maximum 500 words) explaining why attending this summer school would be important for their academic studies or career and also outlining the reasons why a scholarship is required. Scholarship recipients will be selected on the basis of documented academic performance, personal achievements, and financial needs.
- • Up to 5 scholarships (covering the participation fees) are available for PhD students and talented undergraduate students affiliated with Padova and Lausanne Universities. Scholarship applicants must send a statement of purpose (maximum 500 words) explaining why attending this summer school would be important for their academic studies or career.
Benefits of attending
Through both attending lectures and practicing concepts, theories and empirical methods in group discussions and workshops, students will gain insights and suggestions on how to develop STS sensibility in relation to the study of futures in technoscience-making processes. Moreover, the school is intended to act as an intellectually and socially stimulating environment. Drawing upon previous experience, the school is organised to foster informal learning opportunities, sharing of ideas, and developing networks among participants.
Participants will be granted two-months of free access to the research online platform TIPS (Technoscientific Issues in the Public Sphere, http://www.tipsproject.eu/tips/#/public/home). The TIPS research online platform allows users to implement automatic procedures for collecting, classifying, and analysing digital contents available on the web – mainly online news – in order to monitor science and technology topics and their evolution. The platform includes UK, US, French, Spanish, Russian and Latin-American daily newspapers, with more than 2.6 million documents.
How to apply
The application form is available here. After space for personal details, the form includes a place to upload a short scientific CV (maximum 2 pages) and a statement of interest (maximum 300 words), which should describe the applicant’s current research and its relevance to the aims of the summer school. Finally, a statement of purpose (maximum 300 words) is mandatory only for scholarship applications.
Applications must be submitted electronically to the Summer School Organizing Committee at: stsitaliasummerschool@gmail.com.
The application deadline is April 30th, 2022.
Schedule
− April 30th, 2022: Application deadline
− May 15th, 2022: Notification of acceptance and scholarship eligibility.
− June 15th, 2022: Registration deadline
Scientific and Organising Committee
- • Marc Audétat (University of Lausanne)
- • Simone Arnaldi (University of Trieste)
- • Silvia Casini (Aberdeen University)
- • Luca Chiapperino (University of Lausanne)
- • Stefano Crabu (University of Padova)
- • Paolo Giardullo (University of Padova)
- • Paolo Magaudda (University of Padova)
- • Barbara Morsello (University of Padova)
- • Federico Neresini (University of Padova)
- • Francesco Panese (University of Lausanne)
- • Annalisa Pelizza (University of Bologna)
- • Philippe Sormani (University of Lausanne)
Please do not hesitate to contact the Organising Committee via email at stsitaliasummerschool@gmail.com for any further questions regarding the school.
