In June 2021, more than 180 early-career Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars and participants congregated at this year’s Australasian STS Graduate Network Conference (henceforth AusSTS2021) to reflect on the theme of “situated practice.” The third event since the network was founded in 2017, this year’s multi-sited gathering comprised local nodes in the Australian cities of Sydney, Melbourne, and Darwin, …
Category Archives: Features
Digital exclusions: mental health and digital life
This article is part of the series: Tracking Digital Psy
We are closing our series with a podcast that turns to the absences and missing voices emerging alongside Digital Psy; the lifeworlds and experiences of those not interpellated into digital care. In this podcast, we explore the notion of “digital exclusion”, commonly used to describe the challenges of digital participation in terms of a lack of devices or skills. Here, we approach digital exclusion as an empirical artifact and trace its edge through policy, care provision, technology design, and the everyday.
The first part focuses on the UK, where we talk to a disability activist and share the highlights of a “theatre of the oppressed” workshop that took place in London. Collectively we produced artistic responses to the theme “digital exclusion” with people who experienced barriers to …
Falling off the cliff: Mythical sacrifice mirrored in Sweden’s Covid-19 response
This article is part of the series: The Age of COVID-19
Ättestupa is the Swedish word given to a number of steep cliffs. The myth of the ättestupa holds that in prehistoric Nordic times, older community members would throw themselves off a precipice for the sake of the greater good during famines or crises. The harrowing myth of ritual sacrifice has shown up in recent popular culture, such as in the …
Long Covid, chronic fatigue syndrome and women: the shadow of hysteria
This article is part of the series: Dispatches from the pandemic
Is long Covid disseminated by newspapers?
On April 14th, 2021, the British journalist and writer George Monbiot published an article entitled “Apparently just by talking about it, I’m super-spreading long Covid.” (Monbiot, 2021). Monbiot had learned that during a recent public presentation Michael Sharpe, professor of psychology at Oxford University and founder of a clinic specialized in the …
Writing Life No. 6: An interview with Sally Wyatt
This article is part of the series: Writing Life
Figure 1. Sally’s writing spaceSally Wyatt is a science and technology studies (STS) scholar and Professor of Digital Cultures at Maastricht University. She is a prolific academic writer, who has engaged with a broad variety of topics, ranging from digital healthcare practices and online genetic testing, big data and the need for appropriate regulations, to infrastructures, non-users, new …
Writing Life No. 5: An interview with Robert Desjarlais
This article is part of the series: Writing Life
Photo by Robert Desjarlais“British poet W.H Auden suggested that true poets are those who like ‘hanging around words listening to what they say.”
Desjarlais, 2011, Counterplay: An Anthropologist at the Chess Board,15.
At the Paris Institute of Advanced Studies, where Robert is currently a research fellow, it is 3:30 p.m. We meet online to discuss how to …