Short Abstract

This Roundtable opens a reflexive space for Master's & PhD students to examine how access, mobility, and supervision shape their paths in STS. We seek to foreground student voices, so roundtable speakers must be graduate students at the time of proposing an abstract via the conference cfp

Description

Graduate students across Europe navigate workplace and fieldwork environments that are complex and uneven. Access to STS+ programs varies widely: students from regions where STS is underrepresented or not institutionally established face additional barriers, as do those transitioning from natural sciences or engineering. Entry into programs (sometimes linked to employment; other times not at all!), as well as researcher autonomy and supervision are shaped by institutional hierarchies, financial constraints and informal networks. Amid changing academic infrastructures and post-pandemic mobility regimes, students increasingly rely on peer networks, social media, and mailing lists to track news and opportunities. These practices reflect new forms of student agency, where collective accountability meets individual planning.

"Positioning the Academic Track" offers a reflexive space for graduate students joining EASST to collectively examine their position within European academia:

1. Accessing the Academic Track

Access to MA and doctoral programs across Europe is configured through linguistic, financial, cultural, and disciplinary parameters. Entry points often depend on informal networks and local academic traditions. We invite reflections that trace the challenges and creative strategies that shape access and belonging in graduate STS education.

2. Mobility and Exchange – or, how training, research and livelihood intersect!

Mobility is often celebrated as a hallmark of the European project, yet it also exposes the uneven conditions under which students live, work, and learn. We welcome contributions that examine how infrastructures of movement and exchange shape belonging, identity, and visibility within networks, and how students navigate or reimagine said conditions through everyday practice, collaboration or activism.

3. Supervision Assemblages

Supervision formally structures qualification and credit, but in practice emerges through assemblages of people, institutions, and affects that shape scholarly development and well-being. We invite contributions that explore how diverse supervision models across Europe cultivate (or challenge) hierarchy, mentorship, accountability or care, and how communities of scholarly support can strengthen both academic and personal flourishing.