What does it mean to do STS at the margin? (16th October 2012, Copenhagen)
This workshop is inspired by the great experience at the EASST 2010 Trento Pre-conference PhD workshop: ‘Weeds, Offcuts, Issues and Troubles’ and the series of ‘Flows, Doings, Edges’ workshops held over the past years. At these events, participants discussed issues from their research, relating to empirical or theoretical issues which did not fit, practical and technical obstacles or frozen themes. At the 2012 Pre-conference Workshop we engage with a theme which crops up again and again in lots of PhD students’ research practice: feeling isolated in the position from which we do our research from. To address this theme, the main idea of the workshop is to develop conversations about experiences of doing STS at a variety of margins, including – but not limited to – margins in terms of discipline, location/geography, gender, race, economic status, age-related and language.
Drawing on our distributed experiences we will engage in collective reflection about strategies and tactics of being positioned as an STS student at a margin. Which are the paths that students and scholars are following? Are there other ways? Do we have to build niches – e.g. sub-specialities, feminist inspired solidarity groups, …? Are there spaces for these ideas within the community of STS scholars? How can we create mechanisms for a productive interaction from our own positions?
At this workshop we will talk about possible similarities/dissimilarities among the problems and frustrations we experience and (more or less) cope with at these marginal(ised) positions. Therefore, the workshop will provide ample room for informal discussions in workable groups that allow new spaces of possibilities to open up; new points of view can emerge.
Please send us an abstract in which you describe your research and how you conceptualise yourself and your work to be positioned at a margin. How does your research take place at a margin; how is your position marginalised? What does it mean for you to do STS at a margin?
The abstract should be up to 500 words and submitted to students@easst.net by 15th May 2012.
The workshop is organised by Ingmar Lipert (Augsburg University) and Juan F. Espinosa Cristia (University of Leicester).
Estudios de la Economía 