IAS-STS Conference 2012 - Call for Papers

Each year, the Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society (IAS-STS) - hosted by the Inter-University Research Centre for Technology, Work and Culture (IFZ) - holds a conference which in 2012 will be on May 7-8.

The call for papers will be open until January 30.

For this conference, the Working Group Queer STS will organize a special session: 

Queerness in science and technology studies
This session is interested in queer perspectives in and on science and technology studies which challenge heteronormative and hegemonic point of views in these fields of research. First of all, this calls for papers dealing with the basic theoretical question: If a ‘queer’ point of view stands for opposing the hegemonic views – how useful, then, is the concept of ‘queerness’ for science and technology studies? Secondly, we are interested in papers analysing STS on a meta-level: How do hegemonic views become established? What structural role does heteronormativity play in STS?

Furthermore, we invite scholars who discuss queer STS based on empirical research, asking for instance: Who are ‘the others’ in discourses about ‘average users’ of technology? How much deviation from the norm is implied or tolerated when standard procedures in science and technology are defined? What are methodological consequences when critique on heteronormativity in research is taken into account? How does this perspective influence the role of the researcher? [text taken form the call]