WTMC Annual Meeting 2024
Program WTMC Annual meeting
08 March 2024, De Balie, Amsterdam
10.30-11.00 Welcome and update about WTMC
By Esther Turnhout (University of Twente and Academic director WTMC)
11.00-12.30 The kids aren’t alright: an institutional perspective on PhD well-being
Organized by Efe Cengiz (University of Groningen) and Marije Miedema (University of Groningen)
12.30-13.30 Lunch
13.30-14.30 Keynote lecture by Mette Svendsen (University of Copenhagen, Dk): Terrestrial futures: the non-imagination of ecological peril in precision medicine
Chaired by Sandra Calkins (University of Twente) and with commentary by Else Vogel (University of Amsterdam)
14.30-15.30 Science and policy in times of populistic politics
Organized by Paul Diederen (Rathenau Institute) and Laurens Hessels (Rathenau Institute, Leiden University)
15.30-16.00 Tea Break
16.00-17.30 Knowledge crossroads: synergies of arts and sciences in STS
Organized by Marieke Meesters (Meertens Institute) and Michelle Westerlaken (University of Cambridge, UK)
17-30-19.00 Drinks
Panel details and abstracts
The kids aren’t alright: an institutional perspective on PhD well-being
The general unwell-being of PhD communities are becoming harder to ignore with each passing day. We don’t want to reduce this issue to a personal problem, but focus on the institutional aspects that require broad and critical attention. In this panel, we invite interaction between members of WTMC. Two talks will be followed by a communal discussion, where we will be sharing lived experiences and ideas on how to move forward.
- Organized by: Efe Cengiz (University of Groningen) and Marije Miedema (University of Groningen)
- Speakers: Tamarinde Haven (VU Amsterdam), Joeri Tijdink (Amsterdam UMC), Marie Stadel (Promovendi Network Netherlands)
Terrestrial futures: the non-imagination of ecological peril in precision medicine
Keynote lecture by Mette N. Svendsen, Centre for Medical Science and Technology Studies, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
Precision medicine is a field of future promise. In the Global North, this promise has mobilized huge investments in genomic technologies and data-driven infrastructures aiming at ‘precisioning’ and personalizing diagnosis, treatment, and prevention to the individual or subgroups of individuals. STS scholarship provides rich sources for understanding how such anticipations and future promises shape the present. But in this position paper, I take an interest in not only temporal imaginaries, but temporal ‘non-imagination’ (Prainsack 2022). In political discussions and conversations among central actors in precision medicine there exists an absence—a non-imagination—of treating present and future environmental collapse as relevant to the field, despite the field’s huge energy consumption. This non-imagination opens space for asking questions about the common good in both precision medicine and in STS scholarship. Whose good is imagined and worth attending to? What role does and should terrestrial futures play in STS scholarship on frontier genomic and data-intensive technologies? In discussing these questions, I advocate for the need to explore non-imagined futures as moral practices with consequences for who and what can live on earth.
Mette N. Svendsen is Professor in the Centre for Medical Science and Technology Studies at the University of Copenhagen. She has an extensive publication record in leading international journals of science and technology studies, cultural anthropology, and medical anthropology. She has pioneered several team-based, multisited, and interdisciplinary research projects. Theoretically, her work has crafted dialogues between science and technology studies, medical anthropology, and public health. Methodologically, she has developed innovative comparative approaches to investigate life and its value. She is the author of Near Human: Border Zones of Life, Species, and Belonging published by Rutgers University Press (2022).
- Chaired by Sandra Calkins (University of Twente)
- Commentary by Else Vogel (University of Amsterdam)
Science and policy in times of populistic politics
In this panel we will explore the conditions for a constructive relationship between science and politics in a populist climate. The latest Dutch elections may bring politicians in power that tend to distrust scientists, and regard them as part of a left-leaning elite that disregards the interests of common people. Many scientists, on the other hand, suspect populist politicians to use scientific knowledge in an opportunistic way or to engage in fact-free politics. Are there possibilities to improve the mutual trust between science and populist politicians?
- Organized by Laurens Hessels (Rathenau Institute, Leiden University)
- Chair: Paul Diederen (Rathenau Institute)
- Speakers: Timo Maas (Environmental Assessment Agency), Bastiaan Rutjens (University of Amsterdam), Anne-Floor Schölvinck (Rathenau Institute)
Knowledge crossroads: synergies of arts and sciences in STS
In this session, we explore the interactions between artistic research and STS. In contrast to using the arts as a form of science communication, we are interested in highlighting approaches in which artistic and scientific perspectives are on equal footing, or where they have merged entirely. Hence, and in interactive fashion, we challenge binary divisions and institutionalized hierarchies between the arts and STS. We will also explore potential rationales for doing so, addressing the question: which knowledges and realities can artistic-STS methods enact, and who benefits?
- Organized by Marieke Meesters (Meertens Institute) and Michelle Westerlaken (University of Cambridge, UK)
- Speakers: Dina A. Mohamed (Leiden University), Shailoh Phillips (Studio Babel, University of Twente), Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (Het Nieuwe Instituut)
