LAST DAY TO APPLY: December 20th, 2024 At 11:59 PM! A journal of the humanities and social sciences founded at UC Berkeley in 1986, Qui Parle aims to publish outstanding theoretical and critical scholarship that crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries. Qui Parle’s mission statement emphasizes the political stakes of work we publish, our commitment to interdisciplinarity,… Read more

The Call for Early-Career Fellowships application is currently open. The deadline to apply is February 15, 2025 (23:59 CET)! With its early-career fellowship program, the Collegium nurtures an environment for promising academics and artists at a critical stage of their career. The program supports courageous projects that cut across and transgress disciplinary boundaries in unconventional… Read more

A new undergraduate journal is in the works at UC Berkeley, with a mission to publish and share high-quality student work, including essays, term papers, and senior theses, within the disciplines of critical theory, history of science, Science and Technology Studies (STS), and the humanities. The journal’s founders are seeking passionate students interested in the… Read more

John L. Heilbron, Professor Emeritus of History of Science and former Vice Chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley, passed on November 5, 2023, in Padua, Italy, at the age of 89. In recognition of his critical and enduring contributions to HSNS, Professor Cathryn Carson honors his life and legacy in the obituary, “John L.… Read more

Nina Beguš, current lecturer at UC Berkeley’s School of Information and Department of History and former CSTMS Postdoctoral Scholar, has published an article, “Experimental Narratives: A Comparison of Human Crowdsourced Storytelling and AI Storytelling,” in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. Her study, released today, October 28th, compares storytelling by human writers and AI models like GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, revealing… Read more

We are pleased to share that Ximeng Chen, CSTMS Visiting Scholar and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Xi’an Jiaotong University, represented the University of California, Berkeley at the 15th Annual Machine Learning Symposium organized by the New York Academy of Sciences. Professor Chen participated as a poster presenter highlighting her latest research on Moral AI. For… Read more

Course: ISF 100J (Spring 2025)Course Title: The Social Life of ComputingInstructor: Shreeharsh KelkarTime: MWF 1-2 pm in Physics 1 We live in a time which some characterize as the “second machine age” of automation, artificial intelligence, and big data.  This course introduces students to the technical, social, business, and political entanglements of computing from its… Read more

Dr. Melina Packer, former STS DE student, is collaborating with biologist Dr. Ambika Kamath on her forthcoming second book, Feminism in the Wild (MIT Press, Spring 2025). In Feminism in the Wild, Dr. Ambika Kamath and Dr. Melina Packer reveal how scientists studying animal behavior have long projected human norms and values onto animals while seeking to understand them.… Read more

Available for pre-order Former STS DE student, Dr. Melina Packer’s first book, Toxic Sexual Politics (forthcoming spring 2025, from NYU Press) shows how the founding fathers of U.S. toxicology were ideologically aligned with the chemical industry, inventing a science that could “make chemicals safe,” as opposed to one that could adequately protect planetary health from toxicants’ hazards.… Read more