Videos – life in STS and lecture about data

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In September 2019, while attending the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) conference in Sydney, Australia, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Joseph Klett, Science History Institute, Philadelphia, for an oral history project about the development of science and technology studies (STS). He had some great questions, including:

  • When did you first recognise yourself as a scholar of science and technology?
  • Which text was most important to your early understanding of STS?
  • How has STS altered your disciplinary training?
  • How has STS changed since your first 4S meeting?
  • What do you think has been the most important practical application of STS?
  • Do you know any STS jokes?

My interview was part of a bigger project, and there are some wonderful interviews with STS luminaries such as Gary Downey, Sandra Harding, Noela Invernizzi, Sergio Sismondo, Lucy Suchman, Helen Verran and Hebe Vessuri. A playlist of all the full videos is here.

They can also be found online at the Oral History booth on STS infrastructures.

Let’s hope more interviews are conducted at the upcoming 4S conference in New Orleans, US, in September 2019.

In May 2019, I was invited to give a keynote lecture at the DARIAH annual event in Warsaw, Poland. The lecture was called ‘What are we talking about when we talk about data in the humanities?’ It was recorded, and can be found here.

The other keynote speaker was Lev Manovich. The title of his lecture was ‘What does data want?’, and it can also be found online.

One point where we clearly disagree is whether or not data are singular or plural. I argue in my lecture that data are always plural – grammatically, epistemologically and ontologically.