The Undergrad STS @ Berkeley Working Group is a group for undergraduates engaged in thinking, reading, writing and talking about how science, technology and medicine shape & are shaped by society. We have three main goals: the development of a vibrant and supportive undergraduate community with shared intellectual interests in science studies across campus units; increasing knowledge of and access to campus resources that can deepen our engagement with current research; promoting undergraduate curriculum development and research collaboratively.
We currently host a film series, help maintain the Sciences and Society Undergraduate Course Thread and are establishing a Co-Laboratory to help incubate new undergraduate research.
Sign up for our undergraduate STS events list here!
Past Events
(Un)certain Boundaries: Visualizing the Intersections of Science and Society
In April 2013 a group of CSTMS URAP students organized an interdisciplinary STS undergraduate conference addressing the “uncertain boundaries” between science and society. The conference featured presentations from invited mixed media artists. Canadian artist John Naccarato opened with a talk on augmented reality in today’s ubiquitous technology. The husband-wife team caraballo-farman closed with performance art examining Leonor Caraballo’s diagnosis of breast cancer and their subsequent efforts to visualize this experience using 3-D printing and medical imaging.
Nineteen undergraduate speakers from UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Davis attended, representing over sixteen departments including Geography, History, Bioengineering, Cognitive Science, and Anthropology. Research topics ranged from the linguistic nuances of autism to social media and the deceased. In addition to traditional research talks, students also presented their work through dance, film, and five-minute implosion dramatizations. Read more about the event and see photos here.