Studies of Science, Technology & Sustainability: Building a Research Agenda

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The transition of the US and the globe toward greater sustainability has emerged as one of the central policy challenges of the 21st century. This workshop examines how research in the field of science and technology studies (STS) can help contribute to US and global efforts to move toward greater sustainability. The workshop follows on and helps further advance the objectives of a recent meeting organized by scholars at Columbia University and sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The Columbia meeting highlighted the need for NSF and other funding agencies to begin to develop an ambitious agenda for the field of sustainability research. The workshop is organized to develop an important and timely piece of the sustainability agenda: namely, social and humanistic studies of the dynamic relationships among science, technology, and society. The workshop takes place at the National Science Foundation in early Fall 2008, consisting of two days of thematic panels, plenary speakers, and open discussions. The workshop is diverse, drawing on research on a wide range of subfields within STS and neighboring fields of scholarly inquiry, including history of technology, environmental history, environmental sociology, sociology of technology, social studies of science and knowledge, anthropology of development, science and technology policy, environmental ethics and philosophy, philosophy of technology, and many others. These fields have already contributed substantially to our knowledge of sustainability and the environment and are poised to contribute even more substantially. The workshop significantly advances STS as it relates to sustainability. It is designed: (1) to assess and highlight the current contributions of STS to understanding the sustainability challenge and possible solutions; (2) to develop a roadmap of future STS research priorities that would enhance the field's contributions to achieving a sustainability transition; (3) to begin to form a network of sustainability-oriented STS scholars that could guide and promote research on this topic within the STS community; and (4) to begin to identify strategies for connecting STS research on sustainability to research on sustainability policy, especially in the arena of science and technology policy.