First German Science, Technology & Society (STS) Hub Conference in Aachen

IDOS participated in the STS Hub Conference in Aachen with a panel on oceans and seas and presentations by two IDOS researchers.

 

STS-Hub.de is a German STS community network and conference, which was held for the first time in CARL RWTH Aachen on 15-17 March 2023. The theme for this year was “circulations”.  With around 150 participants and about 150 presentations, the interest groups and academic circles in this field form a large community with similar interests. IDOS participated in co-organising the only panel with a maritime topic entitled ‘Ocean Forms/Events – Exploring Maritime Flows and Productions of Knowledge’. Most of the panelists were engaged in the Marine STSing reading group established more than a year ago. Among the panelists were researchers from Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, HIFMB-Universität Oldenburg, ZMT Bremen, Universitas Indonesia, University of Twente, and BRIN.

IDOS researcher Ramona Hägele participated with a presentation on ‘Following Marine Carbon Observations: Techno-human Interactions in Science Making’, and associated researcher Irina Rafliana talked on ‘Traveling Waves of Knowledge and Technologies: The Indonesian Tsunami Warning System’. Both used multimodal video presentation of field work to share experiences from the field in Indonesia, Brazil and Germany. The presentations gained positive feedbacks and inspired participants with the research methods used, including the use of video documentation in the field.

 

The conference itself facilitated exchanges of a wide range of topics relevant to science, technology and society studies. An STS Bar camp was facilitated by INSIST (Interdisciplinary Network for Investigating Science and Technology) as a pre-event for young researchers working on interdisciplinary research related to STS. The conference prepared a dedicated forum for discussions on relations of power and abuses within academia, conflicts of data, authorship and integrity, feminist and intersectional problematisation including labor perspectives on precarious academic working conditions. The forum was encouraged by #DoingSTS to recognise such problems that are not only often studied but also experienced by STS scholars.