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VIRTUAL Queering STS conference
01 September 2021, 9:00 am–6:00 pm
qUCL’s second one-day conference which this year will explore the intersections of Science and Technology Studies and queer theory.
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
qUCL
With a keynote lecture from Professor Kane Race, University of Sydney, this conference aims to further work in the growing field of queer STS through new papers and discussion. The conference showcases work that queers established STS theory – either as critique or to develop new modes of thinking and doing – or that examines the intersections of queerness, science, and technology. The conference will also offer first-person accounts or reflections on the experience of working in STS at the margins.
Free to attend but please register at https://queeringsts.eventbrite.co.uk. A zoom link will be sent to all those registered, both the day before and again, 10 minutes before the start.
Please also read through the qUCL Virtual Code of Conduct
Why queer STS?
Science and technology studies (STS) is “not yet queer” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 1). Even though both queer and science and technology studies have a shared commitment to the denaturalising of hegemonic knowledge (scientific, medical, or otherwise), STS scholarship has only engaged in a limited manner with the historical and ongoing co-construction of science, technology, gender, and sexuality (Voss and Lock, 2012). As Maria do Mar Pereira (2019) has noted, work at the margins of STS pertaining to gender or sexuality Is something of a paradox: viewed as, at once, hackneyed topics and also quite extraneous to the ‘mainstream’ concerns of the discipline. Equally, while work in queer studies has often critiqued the regulatory function of scientific knowledge as it pertains to queerness or the place of science in queer politics, it has sometimes under-problematised the notion of ‘science’ as a body of knowledge.
Excitingly, under the banner of ‘queer STS’, scholars, like the Queer STS working group in Vienna, are increasingly producing engaging work at the intersections of science, technology and queerness. Like them, we think “queerness” does not exclusively encapsulate sexuality and gender. Queer can also be used to examine norms and normative systems - such as race, ability, and class - in science and technology development, organisation, and policy as an object of investigation.
Crucially, as Stephen Molldrem and Mitali Thakor (2017, p. 7) suggest, the future of queer STS depends on “building the scaffold for emotionally and intellectually supporting” scholars working at the fringes of their discipline – creating spaces, like conferences, “to strengthen academic bonds and offer new avenues for Queer STS world-making.”
Any questions please email: lgbtq-research@ucl.ac.uk