AusSTS2022: “Generation”

Date: Thurs 28th and Fri 29 July, 2022

As STS practitioners, we grapple with the understanding that generating knowledge and ideas are always practices in becoming, unfinished, and multiple, never isolated. We are asked to think about the socio-technical, material-discursive, and political relations that generate some worlds and ideas, and exclude others. These multiple configurations speak of the inevitability of interdependence, relationality, permeability, and boundaries.

To think about generation in multiple senses means to think through the humble awareness of our indebtedness to other bodies, knowledges, histories, ecologies—as a part of a community in constant formation. This awareness can reflect in the ethics of our own praxis. It can inspire us to bring into conversation different generations and sensitivities of STS. It can also speak of the knowledges and material practices that shape memories of past generations, and expectations and promises about future ones. It can mean asking what relations get remembered, what relations are maintained, and who is harmed or excluded in the process.

AusSTS is committed to bringing together STS scholars from across Australasia by offering a space where these conversations and reflections can happen freely and generously. Similarly to last year’s workshop, AusSTS 2022 will be a multi-sited event hosted across four locations: Sydney, Melbourne, Darwin, and Wellington. The event will include shared online keynotes, short presentations, as well as local activities and get-togethers.

We invite presentations from early career and PhD/Masters researchers that respond broadly to the theme of ‘generation’. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Generation as era: from historical epochs (18th century, 19th century, 20th century) to population clusters (boomers, millennials, gen z), to cultural movements (beat generation, MTV generation, digital natives, TikTok teens)
• Generation as reproduction: intergenerational trauma, the passing on of genes, the mutation of viruses, interventions into the reproduction of humans, animals, crops, and other biological matter
• Generation as innovation: AI, machine learning, and other computational processes that self-generate images, categories, or actions (e.g. generative adversarial networks (GANs)), the Anthropocene and new technologies for energy generation
• Generation as creativity: pedagogy and the creation of generative spaces, generative frameworks, theories and methods for research, practices and techniques for generating art, language, and social relations
• Generation as hope: regeneration, the next generation, techniques of conservation/preservation in the face of extinction/disaster/destruction

Confirmed speakers:

• Keynote: Anne Pollock (King’s College London)
• Intergenerational Plenary: Hana Burgess (UoA), Mythily Meher (UoA), Billy van Uitregt (VUW)

The AusSTS Graduate Network (or “AusSTS”) is a community for STS scholars situated across Australasia. The network hosts regular events and activities designed to bring together the Australasian STS community, support postgraduate and early career scholars, and to reflect on the nuances of situated knowledge-making. Despite the strong history of critical engagement with science and technology in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, and the growing recognition of the value and excellence of STS scholarship in the region, it is rare to find dedicated or exclusively defined STS departments or institutes in the universities of either countries. As such, AusSTS was founded to serve as an intellectual and collegial home for STS researchers in Australasia. The expertise of our members span across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences including Indigenous studies, anthropology, sociology, media studies, queer and gender studies, history and philosophy of science, public health, law, artistic and creative practice, activism, and more.