Cite as:
Kowal E, Phan T, and Nicoll B (2018) 'Deakin University STS'. In: Khandekar A and Fortun K (Eds.) STS Across Borders Digital Exhibit. Society for Social Studies of Science. Retrieved from: http://stsinfrastructures.org/content/deakin-university-sts/essay
STS Across Borders digital collections are focused through ten shared questions that can be asked across all STS formations so as to enable comparative insight.
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Deakin University has a long history of innovative scholarship and teaching in Science and Technology Studies (STS). In the 1980s and 1990s, scholars including Helen Verran, David Turnbull, David Wade Chambers and Max Charlesworth developed a distinctive Deakin style of STS that focused on contested knowledge systems and Indigenous knowledges. This STS Across Borders archive includes course curricula and textbooks developed during the 1980s and 1990s at Deakin University, interviews with key Deakin Scholars, and original essays and significant publications from the archives of David Turnbull, David Wade Chambers and Helen Verran.
After an interval of more than a decade, STS has returned to Deakin through the Deakin Science and Society Network, formed by Emma Kowal in 2016 and based in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation. STS scholars at Deakin today include Emma Kowal, Tim Neale, Eben Kirksey, Maurizio Meloni, Radhika Gorur, Yamini Narayan, Christopher Mayes, Billy Griffiths, Will Smith, Linda Hancock, and Natalie Ralph, honorary researchers David Turnbull and Richard Gillespie, and PhD students including Elizabeth Lara, Zoe Coombe, Cameron Allen McKean and Kuai Shen. In addition, Thao Phan, Courtney Addison, Nick Barthel de Weydenthal, David Kelly and Ben Nicoll have all worked with the Science and Society Network.
The Deakin Science and Society Network, formed by Emma Kowal in 2016 and based in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, currently hosts the Australasian STS Graduate Network (AusSTS), a network of early career researchers and postgraduate students in social studies of science and technology. Thao Phan and Barbara Bok led a small group of graduate students and early career researchers who launched this in late 2017.
The work of Deakin Science and Society Network is organised into 5 themes: Indigenous Knowledges, Environmental Challenges, Healthy Futures, Data Cultures and Future Earth. The Network hosts a range of STS events and visiting scholars. It also facilitates large symposia, the first being the Anthropocene Campus Melbourne, which is chaired by Timothy Neale with support from Eben Kirksey, Will Smith, and others. As well as its role in STS scholarship, the Network supports interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) and researchers in fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Through funding schemes and public events (such as the Emerging Issues in Science and Societysymposium), the Network demonstrates the importance of research across disciplines for addressing the research challenges of Australia, the region and the world.
This Q&A with David Wade Chambers was produced by Chambers specifically for the STS Across Borders Exhibit. David Wade Chambers was a key figure in the establishment of an STS Unit at Deakin University, Australia, in the 1980s and 1990s. In this document, Wade responds to several questions...Read more
See the 'Deakin University STS Teaching Materials' bundle for a finding aid for various teaching materials, resources, and scholarly papers related to Deakin University's STS teaching in the 1980s and 1990s. The items include images of bark paintings used for teaching purposes in Deakin STS (an example of which is included above) and academic papers on approaches to STS teaching, written by figures such as David Turnbull and David Wade Chambers, including 'Science Worlds: An Integrated Approach to Social Studies of Science Teaching' and 'Seeing a World in a Grain of Sand: Science Teaching in a Multicultural Contex'. See also an essay on 'Indigenous Knowledge and the Curriculum', prepared by Thao Phan for the STS Across Borders Exhibit.
This 'New Scientist' piece, published in December 1995, documents Helen Verran's research into the knowledge systems of Yolngu people of northern Australia. It draws on direct quotes from an interview with Helen Verran. Read more
In this discussion, Edward Woodward, Nicolas Peterson, and Max Charlesworth discuss the 1973 Royal Commission into Aboriginal land rights in the Northern Territory. It aims to 'situate the Royal Commission in its historical context, and also to speculate to some extent about the whole Land...Read more
This artifact includes three separate articles published in the mainstream media that feature interviews and commentary from Max Charlesworth. The articles each address the Anthropological study of science, particularly in relation to research that was conducted by Charlesworth and other STS...Read more
Article by Professor Warwick Anderson on scientific knowledge production, circulation and globalization, published 2018. Includes the role of Deakin STS scholars in revising notions of how knowledge moves.
ABSTRACT: In the fifty years since publication of George Basalla’s ‘The Spread of...Read more