Finding grounds for making and doing STS: Talking across territories

In the lead up to the Australian Science and Technology Studies (AusSTS), please join us as Professor Helen Verran and Dr Michaela Spencer from Charles Darwin University (CDU)/TopEnd Science and Technology Studies (TopEndSTS) join a range of Australian National University (ANU) academics to ‘talk across territories’ about making and doing science and technology studies (M&D STS) from the ground up. By territories, we mean experiences in the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory (and beyond), but more importantly we also mean epistemic, disciplinary and other ways of making, doing and performing knowledge(s) differently but together. In conversation, presenters will share short provocations that seek to draw inspiration in devising novel methods for contemporary inquiry by putting two recently recognised STS inquiry methods into conversation. The first is 'Making and Doing STS' as a method focussed on practices-in-practice in generating STS knowledge and expertise that extends beyond academic papers or books, and which has a growing presence within STS through the American and European STS associations such as the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) and the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST). The second is 'Ground Up Inquiry' as a situated method researching entanglements of politics and epistemics that has emerged through research initiatives jointly authorised by Yolngu Aboriginal Australian institutions and modern university institutions other the last 40 years in northern Australia. Always pursued in partnerships, Ground Up inquiry is committed to making multiple traditions of knowledge making and doing mutually visible where disparate cosmologies are being connected and yet kept separate. The approach recognises such working together as a practice of dual academy research, where protocols and ethos need to be explicitly articulated, nurtured, and maintained with care. Join Helen, Michaela and ANU-based TopEndSTS friends as we think together and find ground in making and doing STS knowledge(s) informed by practice and places.