The Department of Science & Technology Studies (S&TS) at Cornell is concerned with understanding the larger ethical, social, and political dimensions of science-intensive issues. Science and technology are at the core of many of the most important concerns or topics of our day, from the control of military technology, to the ethics of assisted reproduction, to privacy on the Internet. The thread connecting these diverse issues is a shared understanding of science and technology as inherently social activities that are best studied from an interdisciplinary perspective.
The Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell is recognized internationally as a leader in the field. Its faculty has expertise in both historical and contemporary social studies of science and technology, and the department offers a variety of courses on the place of science and technology in the modern world.
Department website
Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow
Publications
Lipp, B. (forthcoming): Caring for Robots. How Care Comes to Matter in Human-Machine Interfacing. In Social Studies of Science
Maibaum, A.; Bischof, A.; Hergesell, J.; Lipp, B. (2021): A Critique of Robotics in Health Care. In AI & Society.
Lipp, B. (2019): Interfacing RobotCare. On the Techno-Politics of Innovation. Doctoral thesis. Technical University of Munich.
Cornell Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow
Publications
Meredith Alberta Palmer, “Rendering settler sovereign landscapes: race and property in the Empire State.” (2020), Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. doi.org/10.1177/0263775820922233
Melinda Garcia, Gayle Skawen:nio Morse, Shelby Loft, and Meredith Alberta Palmer. “Competent Discernment: A Case Study”, in Understanding Indigenous Perspectives in Psychology. (2020).
Meredith A. Palmer, review of “Diagnosing the Legacy: The Discovery, Research, and Treatment of Type 2 Diabetes in Indigenous Youth” by Larry Krotz, Aboriginal Policy Studies, 7(2) (January 2019)
Ph.D. Student in Science and Technology Studies
Postdoctoral Associate
Assistant Professor
Publications
Book:
- Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.
Articles and Book Chapters:
- “Forensics and Fortification in South African Self-Captivity.” History and Anthropology, 2019. 30.5: 521-526.
- Year in Review Essay: “Time and Relational Possibility: Cultural Anthropology in 2017.” American Anthropologist, 2018.120.2: 305-327.
- “Engagements with Decolonization and Decoloniality in and at the Interfaces of STS: Introduction,” co-authored with Kristina Lyons and Juno Parreñas. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 2017. 3.1: 1-10.
- “Genetic Ancestry and Decolonizing Possibilities.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 2017. 3.1:14-19.
- “Jewish Genetics.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Jewish Studies, edited by Naomi Seidman. New York: Oxford University Press. October 26, 2015.
- “Genetic Diaspora: Producing Knowledge of Genes and Jews in Rural South Africa.” Cultural Anthropology, 2014. 29.3: 552-574. (Awarded the 2015 American Anthropological Association General Anthropology Prize for Exemplary Cross-Field Scholarship; Reprinted 2016 in Déjá Lu. 4.1: 1)
- “African Indigenous Citizenship,” co-authored with Rachel Giraudo. The Routledge Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies, 2014.Edited by Engin F. Isin and Peter Nyers, 545-556. New York: Routledge.
- “Religion as Race, Recognition as Democracy: Lemba ‘Black Jews’ in South Africa.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2011. 637.1: 148-164.
Public Scholarship:
- “Respect, care, and labor in collaborative scholarly projects,” co-authored among twenty-six members of the Somatosphere editorial collective, Somatosphere: Science, Medicine, and Anthropology, July 2, 2018.
- “Genetic Ancestry as an Optic: Reconciliation Revisioned, Diaspora Revived,” in Book Forum—Alondra Nelson’s The Social Lives of DNA, edited by Eugene Raikhel. Somatosphere: Science, Medicine, and Anthropology, January 24, 2018.
- Black Lives Matter Syllabus Week 13: Noah Tamarkin on thinking with South African Activists and Artists, Anthropoliteia, December 7, 2016.
Assistant Professor
Publications
Books
- Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2018.
- Gender: Animals, Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA. 2017.
Articles and Chapters
"Afterward: Ecological Inqueeries." Co-authored with Nicole Seymour. 2022. Environmental Humanities 14 (3).
"Pronouns for an apocalyptic future: asymmetrical terms for a new era." 2021. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 4 (1): 1989849. https://doi.org/10.1080/25729861.2021.1989849
"Power, Care and Species Difference in Orangutan Rehabilitation in Sarawak: A Roundtable." Co-written with Alicia Izharuddin, Monamie Bhadra Haines, Faizah Zakaria, and Robert Cribb. Journal of the MalaysianBranch of the Royal Asiatic Society 94, no. 1 (2021): 203-215. https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2021.0019
(Video) Science, Technology, and Society Topic 1“From Decolonial Indigenous Knowledges to Vernacular Ideas in Southeast Asia.”September 2020. History and Theory. 59(3):413-420. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12169
“Specificity.” April 2020. Indonesia. 109: 65-70. https://doi.org/10.1353/ind.2020.0008
- "An Anthropology of Primatology Exceeds the Primate Order: a feminist and queer critique." 2019 Cahiers d’anthropologie sociale (18: Primates):126-143. https://doi.org/10.3917/cas.018.0126
- “The Job of Finding Food is a Joke: Orangutan Rehabilitation, Work, Subsistence, and Social Relations.” 2019. How Nature Works. Alex Blanchette and Sarah Besky eds. School for Advanced Research Seminar. University of New Mexico Press, pp. 79-98.
- “Arrested: Orangutan Sexuality and the rehabilitation of wildness through captivity in Malaysia.” 2019. History and Anthropology. 30(5): 527-532. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2019.1638773
- “Orangutan Rehabilitation as an Experiment of Decolonization.” 2017. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Peer-reviewed Critical Perspectives. 3(1).
- “Engaging Decolonization and Decoloniality in Science and Technology Studies.” 2017. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Peer-reviewed Critical Perspectives. 3(1). Co-authored with Kristina Lyons and Noah Tamarkin. https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v3i1.28794
- “Introduction.” 2017. Gender: Animals. Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA.
- “Hunting.” 2017. Gender: Animals. Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA.
- “The Materiality of Intimacy: Rethinking ‘Ethical Capitalism’ through Embodied Encounters with Animals in Southeast Asia.” 2016. positions: asia critique. 24(1):97-107. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-3320065
- “Producing Affect: transnational volunteerism in a Malaysian orangutan rehabilitation center.” 2012. American Ethnologist. Volume 39, Issue 4, pp. 673-687. 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01387.x
Public Scholarship
- “The Semi-Wild.” Ö1 Kunstradio (Art Radio on Austrian national public radio). October 14, 2018. This was a 20-minute sound installation stemming from collaboration with the artist Ines Lechleitner: http://www.kunstradio.at/2018B/14_10_18.html
- "A Joke of a Job: Naturalizing the Work of Semiwild Orangutans." 2018. Theorizing the Contemporary, Fieldsites, July 26. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/a-joke-of-a-job-naturalizing-the-work-of-semiwild-orangutans
- “YNK: You Never Know #17, Blasted Landscapes/Abundant Futures #4 with Juno Salazar Parreñas.” Documenta 14: Savvy Funk Radio Broadcast, FM 103.0 MHz in Berlin, FM 90.4 MHz in Kassel, SW 15560 kHz, and streamed worldwide on Deutschlandfunkkulture (German national radio’s culture station). July 4, 2017. This was a 13-minute interview about my forthcoming manuscript followed by a live soundscape by Islands+Songs. Other broadcasts featured Dipesh Chakrabarty and Juanita Sundberg. Available online: https://www.mixcloud.com/Islands_Songs/ynk-12-_-june-29th-_-blasted-landscapes-abundant-futures-3-_-with-juno-salazar-parre%C3%B1as/
- "Multispecies Ethnography and Social Hierarchy." Engagement: a Blog Published by Anthropology and Environment Society of the American Anthropological Association. September 15, 2015.
- “Queerly Questioning.” A regularly featured column that I have written since July 1997. The Lesbian News. Oldest monthly magazine of its kind, publishing since 1975.
Postdoctoral Associate, Data Science & Society Lab
Publications
S. E. Sachs(2019). "The algorithm at work? Explanation and repair in the enactment of similarity in art data." Information, Communication & Society.DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2019.1612933
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society for the Humanities and the Department of Science & Technology Studies
Stanford H. Taylor Postdoc Fellow, STS and Anthropology
Professor of the Practice
Publications
Selected Publications:
Overby KJ, Fins JJ. Organ Transplantation for Individuals with Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Sandra Jensen’s Legacy. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. 2016;25:272-281.
Overby KJ, Weinstein MS, Fiester AM. Addressing Consent Issues in Donation after
Circulatory Determination of Death. American Journal of Bioethics. 2015;15(8):3-9.
Overby KJ Weinstein MS, Fiester AM. Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “Addressing Consent Issues in Donation after Circulatory Determination of Death. American Journal of Bioethics. 2015;15(9):W3-W5.
Olson T, Overby KJ, Bessler M, Wilson DB. Chapter 24: Transitioning from Pediatric to Adult Medical Care for Patients with Dyskeratosis Congenita. In Dyskeratosis Congenita Clinical Guidelines (1st ed., 2015). Editors: Sharon A. Savage and Elizabeth F. Cook. Dyskeratosis Congenita Outreach Inc.
Overby KJ. Chapter 1: Pediatric Health Supervision. Rudolph’s Pediatrics 21st ed. (2003); Author & Assoc. Ed.; Abraham Rudolph, Colin Rudolph; (Editors) Appleton and Lange, Norwalk, CT.
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FAQs
How did STS develop as a field of study? ›
Like most interdisciplinary fields of study, STS emerged from the confluence of a variety of disciplines and disciplinary subfields, all of which had developed an interest—typically, during the 1960s or 1970s—in viewing science and technology as socially embedded enterprises.
What is a science and technology degree? ›As a broad field, science and technology cover a breadth of disciplines, including biotechnology, life and physical science, animal and plant science and information technology. Science and technology professionals can be found in almost any sector, from government to manufacturing to pharmaceuticals.
What is STS subject all about? ›Science, Technology and Society (STS) is an interdisciplinary field that studies the conditions under which the production, distribution and utilization of scientific knowledge and technological systems occur; the consequences of these activities upon different groups of people.
Is science and technology a major? ›The major in Science & Technology Studies aims to further students' understanding of the social and cultural meanings of science and technology. Ideal for students pursuing careers in law, public policy or management, as well as for scientists, engineers and others interested in science, technology and society.
Why is it important to study STS as an academic field? ›Studies of technology and science provides students with insight into how different processes of knowledge are initiated and progressed, and how innovative technological processes are developed, employed and increase in importance.
What is the role of STS in education? ›STS learning approach focuses on solving problems and thinking processes that involve transfers concept by applying the concepts that learned at schools to the real sitation in society. Each STS aproach stages will strengthen the students' concepts about the material concept deliver.
What are some careers in science and technology? ›- Computer support specialist.
- Veterinary technician.
- Avionics technician.
- Chemical technician.
- Environmental science technician.
- Hardware technician.
- Forensic science technician.
- Engineering professor.
Rank | Field | Average Salary |
---|---|---|
1 | Biotechnology | $140,091 |
2 | Clinical Research | $139,434 |
3 | Genomics | $119,994 |
4 | Immunology | $103,159 |
Scientist salary in Ministry Of Science & Technology ranges between ₹ 10.8 Lakhs to ₹ 13.8 Lakhs. This is an estimate based on salaries received from employees of Ministry Of Science & Technology.
When did STS emerge as a field of studies? ›STS scholarship dates to the 1930s and even before. In 1935 the sociologist Ludwik Fleck published Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, detailing the social processes involved in how a specific claim came to be widely accepted as scientific knowledge.
Why is it important for people to study and learn about STS as an academic field especially in addressing the issue or problem depicted in the image? ›
STS is an important subject to be learned not just in the academic field but also in addressing the issue depicted in the photograph because it aims to develop the social responsibility of students, develop critical thinking and decision-making skills, the ability to formulate sound ethical and moral decisions about ...
How did science and technology start in the Philippines? ›During the Spanish Regime The beginnings of modern science and technology in the Philippines can be traced to the Spanish regime. The Spaniards established schools, hospitals and started scientific research and these had important consequences for the rise of the country's professions.
What is the greatest contribution of science and technology to society? ›The essence of how science and technology contributes to society is the creation of new knowledge, and then utilization of that knowledge to boost the prosperity of human lives, and to solve the various issues facing society.