From September 3-6, 2025, more than 100 University of Washington faculty and students presented at Reverberations, the 50th Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), a leading interdisciplinary conference for scholars engaged in social studies of science, technology, and medicine (a field often referred to as STS), which was held in Seattle.
To recognize and celebrate this extraordinary demonstration of UW’s expertise, Society + Technology at UW hosted the UW Social at 4S for the 2,000 attendees.
The party was held on the Garden Terrace of the Summit Seattle Convention Center.
To spotlight UW, the Social featured an academic bingo activity, named co-sponsors and faculty speakers, and celebrated UW faculty working at the critical intersections of technology and society with a special book giveaway:
The AI Con by Emily Bender (Linguistics, UW Seattle) and Alex Hanna.
Technocreep and the Politics of Things Unseen edited by Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin (Information School, UW Seattle).
Unmaking the Bomb by Shannon Cram (IAS, UW Bothell).
During the conference, several UW faculty gave signature talks, including:
- Associate Professor Dian Million (American Indian Studies) delivered the presidential plenary keynote on generative dis/connections between indigenous studies and science and technology studies.
- Faculty Lupe Alberto Flores (American Ethnic Studies) and Diana Flores Ruíz (Cinema & Media Studies) featured as keynote speakers in an address on Bordering, which traced struggles and solidarities across bordering mechanisms, describing the use of systems of attention and surveillance to violently separate, confine, and debilitate.
- Graduate students Althea Rao and Sadaf Sadri (DXARTS), and alum Chari Glogovac-Smith (DXARTS), gave the threaded keynote address Art Scenes, offering remarks that recast the technological logics of capitalist racialization and militarism for creative possibility.
- PhC Gabrielle Banabdallah (HCDE) organized the zine festival.
- Faculty and students from Cinema & Media Studies, HCDE, DXARTS, Philosophy, the Information School, Bioethics & Humanities, and more presented their work.
Reverberations was co-chaired by UW faculty Daniela Rosner (HCDE/DXARTS) and Jenna Grant (Anthropology). The organizing team, included Lisa Hoffman (Urban Studies, UW Tacoma), Ryan Burns (IAS, UW Bothell), Anissa Tanweer (eScience, UW Seattle), David Ribes (HCDE, UW Seattle), Wes King (Information School, UW Seattle), Kavita Dattani (GWSS, UW Seattle), Shannon Cram (IAS, UW Bothell).
The University of Washington does not have a single disciplinary home for Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholarship; rather, scholars engaged in research and teaching on the cultural and social aspects of technoscience cross-cut the campuses—from the STS undergraduate program at UW Bothell to the unfunded STSS graduate certificate program, directed by Leah Ceccarelli (Communication).
Co-sponsors of UW Social included: Society + Technology at UW, hosted by the Tech Policy Lab, University of Washington Press, 4S, Science, Technology & Society at UW Bothell, the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, the Science, Technology and Society Studies Graduate Certificate Program, the Department of Communication, CommLead, Human Centered Design and Engineering, DXARTS, and the Department of Bioethics and Humanities at UW Medicine.
Event photographers: Logan Boyd and Matthew Weinstein.
Special thanks to: Abirami Kimsuka Subramanian, Afroditi Psarra, Alex Bolton, Anoolia Gakhokidze, Daniela Rosner, Jane I. Skau, Kyra Arnett, Lisa Hoffman, Matthew Weinstein, Rey Jingrui Yan, Rin Yilin Huang, Sara Goering, Sayan Bhattacharjee, Seohee Kim, and Shannon Cram
