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Short abstract

This presentation reflects on the challenges of conducting STS doctoral research across Northern and Southern epistemologies. Drawing on my research on public participation in Latin America, I highlight the hard work of translating across the many STSs.

Long abstract

Calls to “go South” in Science and Technology Studies (STS) have emphasised the need to pluralise the field’s conceptual genealogies and empirical sites. Yet the practical experience of conducting doctoral research across Northern and Southern STS traditions remains under-discussed. This presentation reflects on the methodological and intellectual challenges of undertaking research that moves between these different epistemic and geopolitical contexts.

Drawing on my doctoral research on public participation with technoscience in Latin America, I explore how dominant STS framings (historically rooted in European and North American debates) continue to shape how researchers approach cases from the Global South. This creates a tension for doctoral researchers: how to engage with established theoretical repertoires while remaining attentive to alternative intellectual traditions, historical trajectories, and political imaginaries emerging elsewhere? This 'double vision' is particularly important when ‘elsewhere’ is actually ‘home’.

Rather than just blankly stating that we need ‘decolonial’ STS, I examine what happens when different STS traditions encounter one another within the research process itself. In doing so, I reflect on issues of conceptual translation, the material limitations of articles, and the institutional pressures shaping doctoral scholarship. My argument is that conducting research across multiple STS geographies is hard work, especially because our European curricula and our ‘canons’ still have limited awareness of social theories outside ‘the North’.