STS-CH

STS-CH Conference 2025

Holding things together?
Change, continuity, critique

Sept 10 – 12, 2025
@University of Zurich, ETH, ZHdK

#STSCH2025

Find the Booklet here

Conference committee: Anna Lytvynova, Bianca Vienni-Baptista, Christopher Salter, Gabriel Dorthe, Karmen Franinovic, Kathrin Eitel, Kiah Lian Rutz, Leila Girschweiler, Luke Stalley, Margo Boenig-Liptsin, Monika Dommann, Nadja Kempter, Philippe Sormani, Sarah Helena Keller, Sara Kinell

Register here!

Programme

–> download as a PDF here.

Keynotes

Brit Ross Winthereik (DTU Copenhagen)

Redressing the Digital Leviathan with Science and Technology Studies

Welcome: Kathrin Eitel (UZH) Margo Boenig-Liptsin (ETH), Philippe Sormani (ZHdK) + Loïc Riom and Alexandra Hofmänner (on behalf of the STS-CH Association)
Moderation: Kathrin Eitel (UZH)

📅 Wednesday, September 10
🕓 16:00 – 17:30
📍 University of Zurich (UZH), Room KOL-G-201
Apéro at Obere Mensa
Address: Rämistrasse 71, Zurich

Hannah Star Rogers (University of Copenhagen)

What holds together? The role of the arts in the future of STS

Welcome: Chris Salter (ZHdK)
Discussant: Philippe Sormani (ZHdK)

📅 Thursday, September 11
🕔 17:00 – 18:00
📍 Museum für Gestaltung, Vortragssaal (1st floor)
Address: Ausstellungsstrasse 60, Zurich

Tram 4, stop: Museum für Gestaltung
More info on the venue

🎉 Special Announcement for Conference Participants 🎉

We’re excited to share that all conference participants will receive FREE access to the Museum of Gestaltung this Thursday – all day long!
Don’t miss this fantastic opportunity to explore one of the most inspiring design museums. Whether you’re into architecture, graphic design, or creative innovation, there’s something there for everyone.

Roundtable Keynote: The Future of STS in Switzerland

A conversation among leading scholars shaping the landscape of STS in and beyond Switzerland.

📅 Friday, September 12
🕤 09:30 – 11:00
📍 ETH Zurich, Room HG E 5
Address: Rämistrasse 101, Zurich

Speakers:

  • Martina Merz (University of Klagenfurt, Austria)
  • Regula Burri (HCU Hamburg, Germany)
  • Anna Jobin (University of Fribourg, Switzerland)
  • Francesco Panese (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)
  • Monika Dommann (University of Zurich, Switzerland)
  • Nicolas Baya Laffite (University of Geneva, Switzerland)

Moderation: Margo Boenig-Liptsin

Party

📍 Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)
Toni-Areal, 5th floor — Rampe & Kunstraum (Room 5.K12)
Förrlibuckstrasse 109, Zurich
Tram 17, stop Fischerweg
How to get to ZHdK

📅 Thursday, September 11
🕡 18:30 onwards
Apéro on the Rampe, followed by party in the Kunstraum

the music/manifesto multiple: dj pierre pi & vj pals,feat. ako amo (tbc)

Join us for the party as a “manifesto production machine” which, then, will be taken up as the next-in-a-series manifestation/input/output of/into/out of the Digital Interfacing  project.

Workshop Registrations

1. Reading Texts Together
A moderated discussion engaging with pre-circulated texts on ‘alternatives’ in STS. Participants will reflect on critical and constructive interventions in times of conflict, tension, and uncertainty.
👉 Register here

2. Critiquing Radicalization: A Sociotechnical Perspective on Political Events
A workshop examining radicalization through STS lenses, focusing on sociotechnical factors shaping political events.
👉 Register here

📢 Call for Applications: Scholarships for STS-CH 2025 Conference in Zurich

We’re excited to offer 7 scholarships for early career researchers from European low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to attend the STS-CH 2025 Conference in Zurich!

What’s covered?
✔ Travel support (up to 500 CHF)
✔ 3 nights of accommodation
✔ Total support up to 1,100 CHF

Who can apply?
🔹 PhD candidates or postdocs (max. 5 years post-PhD)
🔹 Affiliated with institutions in European LMICs (OECD DAC List)
🔹 Presenting at the conference or organizing a panel

How to apply:
Submit a 1-page motivation letter, CV, and proof of participation (e.g., abstract/panel acceptance)
📅 Deadline: 22 June 2025
📧 Send as a single PDF to: conference@sts-ch.org (Subject: Application Scholarship)

More information here.

Conference Fees per Participant

  • Regular: 80 CHF
  • STS-CH Members: 60 CHF
  • Students / PhD Candidates: 45 CHF
  • STS-CH Member Students: 35 CHF
  • Listeners* (Regular): 80 CHF
  • Listeners* (Students): 60 CHF

*Please note that a limited number of spots is available for listeners.

Panel Formats

  • Open panels with paper presentations followed by discussion
  • Roundtable discussions for dynamic exchanges among scholars
  • Workshops designed for collaborative exploration of specific ideas or methods
  • Experimental formats that creatively engage participants (e.g., interactive sessions, performances, or installations) (500 words)
  • Closed panels, where panelists are pre-selected to foster focused discussion on a specific topic

Questions?
1. Check our Q+A*
2. Otherwise reach out to conference@sts-ch.org

* Q+A is a living document and will be updated continuously, pls. check it regularly

Holding things together?
Change, continuity, critique

In response to multiple crises and uncertain futures, nostalgic factions of contemporary society sometimes  lament lost togetherness and a lack of shared knowledge about what happens, what should be done, and how to make sense of it all. Political upheavals, economic inequalities, ecological devastations, and climate threats indeed do seem to call for restored unity and a renewed pact of knowledge in society governed by relevance. Desirable futures are then imagined through collective efforts and revived interdisciplinary perspectives, including science and technology studies (STS). Through collaborative programs, public engagement, action research, transdisciplinary ventures, and the idea that “things could be otherwise,” STS as a multifaceted research field indeed has come to be built around the hope for a more just and inclusive world.

As its title question indicates, the STS-CH 2025 conference opens up a space to reflect on the field’s normative commitments and empirical inquiries. Does the intellectual and political project of a patient constructivist analysis still fit with a state of the world in which justice and emancipation feel like vague dreams? And, if not, what else does STS have in store? Is there something like a “common good” that STS should advocate? Conversely, and 20 years after a resounding paper by Bruno Latour, in which he asked if “critique had run out of steam”, is STS able and willing to account for conflicting situations between irreconcilable worldviews? What is the status of critique in today’s world? How do different research cultures within STS deal with critique? What can we learn from STS rooted in North America or Asia?

The constitutive relationships between knowledge cultures, technical practices, and forms of collective life have always been essential to STS. Collaborative forms of action, including transdisciplinarity, collaboration and public participation, all of which reinforce connections and sustain cohesion in both epistemic and political pursuits, have been studied extensively and practically engaged in. This conference welcomes contributions that prolong these canonical endeavors or imagine new ventures, while inviting reflexive perspectives. Does the emphasis on how things and people “hold together” properly account for contemporary conflicts, tensions, troubles, and uncertainties? Does the indispensable role of togetherness and hope in navigating tumultuous times need to be reframed and revised? And if so, how? Can the notion of a “common good” be dispensed with? If contemporary controversies are deemed to generate irreconcilable positions, what could be the contribution of STS to the deliberation and development of a collective journey toward a more cohesive and resilient world? 

The STS-CH 2025 conference aims to approach togetherness from different perspectives that inquire into processes and practices of change, continuity, critique and potentially also the deliberate destruction of existing structures, social or sociotechnical. The goal is not to reach consensus on potential futures but to coproduce insights and support performative voices that imagine other liveable futures, connecting past and present experiences.

The conference will explore togetherness, transformation, inheritance and collectivity as means or devices, as well as discourses and practices, to navigate and recompose current societal worlds. We invite rethinking and reframing the following questions and lines of inquiry:

  • How does the emphasis on things and people “holding together” relate to contemporary conflicts, tensions, troubles, and uncertainties? 
  • Does the indispensable role of togetherness and hope in navigating tumultuous times need to be reframed and revised? And if so, how? 
  • If contemporary controversies are deemed to foster irreconcilable positions, what could be the contribution of STS to the deliberation and development of a collective journey toward a more  resilient world?
  • What notion(s) of “common good” can or should STS contribute to articulate? What place do critical interventions have in the process? How might a renewed STS impetus – critical and constructive – look like? 
  • How can STS be developed and used, if not repurposed, in “inventive ways” so that its critique will last? How do “care” and “craft” fit into the picture?
  • Did Latour overstate his case, conflating the public performance of polemic positions in mainstream media with the supposedly irreconcilable character of mutually exclusive worldviews per se?  
  • “Normative commitments,” “empirical basis,” “sociotechnical historicity” – if these are key concerns in and across current STS, how do they relate to each other, in and as any actual case? And what might be next?