Short Abstract:

The Making and Doing program is set out below. The main time for viewing these contributions is on Wednesday.

Long Abstract:

The STS Making and Doing Program aims to give visibility to scholarship that relates to our fields of study and action in generative ways, without adhering to the dominant image of impact. It highlights scholarly practices for producing and expressing STS knowledge and expertise that extend beyond the academic paper or book. Projects in STS making & doing provide equal attention to practices of knowledge expression and knowledge travel as integral to experimental practices of knowledge production. By increasing the extent to which participants learn from one another about practices they have developed and enacted, the initiative seeks to foster flows of STS scholarship beyond the field and expand the modes of STS knowledge production.

Note on times: All Making & Doing stands will be staffed from 12:00 to 15:00. Participants have the option of staffing their stands from 10:30 till 17:00.

The contributions listed below are situated on the NU building second floor. Stand numbers are appended to the contribution title. Click the icon next to the Location heading above to see a floorplan.

Other contributions are either in the NU building ground floor atrium, or in HG first floor around the Aula.

M&D films are in NU Theaters 2, 5, 8, 9.

Accepted contibutions:

Session 1

Reflective dialogues around a carpet: toward a new geography of responsibilities in addressing digital inequalities (Stand NU2_01)  

Nicole Goedhart (Amsterdam UMC)

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Short abstract:

Stand NU2_01

Abstract:

We designed a carpet to facilitate discussions on the complex problem of digital inequality. The carpet design is a result of our participatory action research on digital inequalities in Amsterdam (2017-2023). During this research policymakers, ICT designers, and other professionals often asked the question: Who are those citizens with a distance to the online world? Digital inequality was often oversimplified, primarily portraying older individuals lacking ICT skills. This stereotype neglects demographic diversity and fails to recognize that digital inequality affects various age groups, including children. Additionally, the emphasis on skills overlooks that ICT use is influenced by the social (technical) space that people live in, for example, the dominant societal norms and values, and the way in which society is organized. A myopic focus on elderly and individual skills risks ignoring that the structural consequences of digitalization for citizens across different backgrounds remain invisible (intersectional invisibility) and delays measures being taken to remedy the negative effects. The carpet challenge participants (policymakers, researcher, ICT designers and others) to reflect critically on their own assumptions and blind spots trough reflective questions, fostering a deeper situated understanding of the complex problem. Moreover, it helps to identify opportunities for systemic actions, recognizing that digital inequality is not solely an individual responsibility but rather a complex interplay involving macro-societal, meso-organizational, and micro-individual factors.Authors: Nicole Goedhart and Christine Dedding

AI Utopia: convivial technologies there and then (Stand NU2_02)  

Andreas Liesenfeld

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Short abstract:

We propose an installation of around a dozen poster size (A0) cityscape photographs that together form an photo exhibition.

Abstract:

What if AI technologies were build by the people, for the people - serving everybody equally well, safe and fair. In short, what if they were tools for conviviality (Illich 1973)? This foto installation explores what a utopian AI technology landscape looks like, inspired by transformations of public space and technologies here in the Netherlands. Through a series of poster-size (A0) contrastive cityscape photographs, we show how Dutch cityscapes transformed over the past decades, from the car-infested molochs of the 70s, into spaces for bicycles, trees and pedestrians of today. Retracing how Dutch landscapes evolved into more convivial spaces: what would a more convivial AI technoscape look like?

Bringing climate science and society closer together: a citizens’ assembly tasting session (Stand NU2_03)  

Eline Ramaaker (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

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Short abstract:

The aim of this session is to help attendees to reflect on their roles as researchers in society, how their roles can help address the climate crisis, and to provide an example of how they themselves can engage with societal actors.

Abstract:

The urgency surrounding climate change is increasing in research and policy domains, yet many citizens feel distanced from science and politics. Traditional science communication methods do not seem to reduce the distance between citizens and (knowledge) institutes. In our project “Climate Research in Dialogue”, we experiment with citizens’ assemblies as a new form of science communication to bridge this gap between society and science and to better align scientific knowledge with citizens’ lived experiences. In this workshop, attendees will experience how citizens' assemblies can be used as a new form of research and science communication. We will guide attendees through a practice citizens’ assembly regarding the roles climate scientists (can) take in mitigating the climate crisis and on preferred methods to engage with citizens and other societal actors. The aim of this session is to help attendees to reflect on their roles as researchers in society, how their roles can help address the climate crisis, and to provide an example of how they themselves can engage with societal actors. After this practice session we will hold a brief presentation on our own citizens’ assembly experiences and findings. We will discuss: 1. Theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the climate citizen assemblies;   2. Activities used during the assemblies and how the assemblies may help build relations between scientists and citizens; 3. Preliminary findings and themes from the climate citizen assemblies (e.g. proposed climate science research-questions; roles and collaborations between citizens, scientists); 4. Efforts to ensure social impact, e.g. through cross-sector collaboration.  

Post-growth control wars (Stand NU2_04)  

Andreu Belsunces (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)

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Short abstract:

Collaborative workshops will involve four groups, each comprising a maximum of seven persons, making a total of 28 participants.

Abstract:

Post-Growth Control Wars (PGCW) is an ethnographic futures living lab and a collaborative action-research method that integrates strategic, systems, and transition design, play, generative conflict, and performance. It conceptualizes individuals and groups as key holders and catalysts of socio-technical imaginaries. Consequently, it aims to achieve several objectives.The primary goal is to create conditions conducive to observing how contested visions of the future and controversies surrounding degrowth and sustainability converge, colliding and co-evolving together in the realms of industry, governance, technology, and the economy.Additionally, PGCW aims to stimulate social (and scholarly) imagination by simulating sociotechnical scenarios framed by planetary boundaries. It seeks to challenge modern optimism rooted in the myth that techno-scientific progress can solve all challenges, including the futures it produces. PGCW also strives to decolonize imaginaries captured by technocapitalist logics and to rehearse socio-technical transition strategies towards a post-growth society.PGCW represents the latest iteration of "Control Wars," a method previously focused on automated technologies, technological sovereignty, data commons (including an adaptation for primary schools), climate change, and the potential consequences of Covid-19. Since 2018, it has been implemented in academic, activist, artistic, and design contexts in various cities, including Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, New York, Eindhoven, Porto, Mexico City, Amsterdam, and Bilbao.Specifically, PGCW has been conducted on three occasions, serving to build an archive of the post-growth imagination, create stories about post-growth transitions, identify commonplaces within the post-growth imagination, develop a catalog of possible transitional tactics, and re-enchant the discourse and potential practices around degrowth.

Reconfiguring contraceptive development: speculative timescapes to ask ‘what’s otherwise?’ For pregnancy prevention (Stand NU2_05)  

Cecily Klim (University of New South Wales, Sydney)

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Short abstract:

Participatory workshop where participants will be divided into small groups to work on the tasks collaboratively.

Abstract:

From tracking apps and wearables, to ‘smart’ condoms, hormonal profiling and implantable microchips, digital contraceptive technologies offer a potential ‘solution’ to unintended pregnancy, limited pharmaceutical innovation, and enduring user dissatisfaction of modern pharmaceutical contraceptives. Femtech companies leading this development appear to be user-led and pride their technologies for meeting various user-defined contraceptive priorities, such as non-hormonal, non-invasive, and user-controlled. While a promising glimpse of hope for a landscape long overdue for change, the transformation of pregnancy prevention from a pharmaceutical drug to a direct-to-consumer digital technology brings about novel risks regarding efficacy, safety, security, and accountability. Indeed, the very ‘novelty’ of these technologies and their ‘transformative’ potential is debatable given the homogeneity of Femtech companies, the similarity of tracking apps to fertility-awareness methods, and their position within a broader landscape of retrogressing reproductive rights.This workshop invites participants to collaboratively explore contraceptive development trajectories. Adapted from a creative qualitative workshop, it is structured around three tasks: (1) prompts participants to think about the past and present by mapping contraceptive methods along a self-defined timeline; (2) introduces various ‘novel’ digital contraceptives for discussion and mapping; and (3) invites participants to speculatively imagine ‘what’s otherwise’ for contraception. While framed around transformation, innovation, and timelines, this workshop ‘troubles time’ by engaging with non-linear trajectories of change that draw attention to the continual co-production of past, present, and future timescapes. Inviting diverse perspectives to reconfigure the future of contraception aims to challenge a solutionist agenda and the normative values ascribed to ‘old’ and ‘new’.

Participatory conservation (Stand NU2_07)  

Jéssica Sacramento da Hora Barros (Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA)) Gabriela De La Rosa (Wageningen University and Research) Charbel El-Hani (Federal University of Bahia)

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Short abstract:

Photography exhibition

Abstract:

There is a lot of evidence that the dialogue between academic and local stakeholders can significantly enhance the conservation of biodiversity. However, local knowledge continues to be marginalised even though local communities are the ones most directly affected by the implementation of environmental policies. Mutual engagement and dialogue between different types of knowledge are crucial for robust and just policies. Ethnoornithological studies are being carried out around the world in recognition of contributions of local knowledge as tools for conservation. Thus, the aim of this project is to investigate the local knowledge of the community of Conde (Bahia, Brazil) about Pyrrhura griseipectus (endemic endangered parakeet) as part of a process of management and conservation of the species, with a view to engaging the community in decision-making processes for environmental and community identity conservation. To achieve the main objective of this project, activities are being carried out with the local communities: participant observation; interviews to inquire into the local knowledge about the biology and ecology of the the parakeet population; workshops and artistic methodologies to increase community engagement; experiments with nest boxes with the aim of recovering the species with the participation of members from the local community. Community participation is crucial not only to build relations based on trust, as provided by long-term conviviality and direct engagement, which may ultimately have consequences to the success of conservation efforts, but above all to provide a space for the voice, perspectives, and decision making of communities often silenced in conservation governance.