IstanbuLab Blog: A Platform for Innovating STS Teaching in Turkey?

In 2018, Duygu Kaşdoğan initiated an interview series on feminist technoscience to be published in IstanbuLab Blog with the aim to contribute IstanbuLab’s research in this field as well as introducing feminist technoscience scholars’ work to the followers of the blog. She opened this interview series with a conversation with Prof. Michelle Murphy over her book The Economization of Life. In time, on the basis of informal conversations with a couple of social scientists located in Turkish universities, we found out that these interviews have been included in a number of course syllabi as teaching materials. This led us to rethink the purpose of IstanbuLab’s blog, and treat it as a platform of STS innovation through the lens of pedagogy. Considering the fact that a lot of students in Turkish universities don’t have access to some of the contemporary STS scholarship (due to linguistic, logistical or financial reasons), IstanbuLab blog’s interview series (preferably to be published both in English and Turkish) provide a set of entry points for teaching STS in undergraduate level. As part of the editorial work put into these blog contents, we try to adjust the length and the level of academic jargon according to the needs of a general readership, which includes undergraduate and early graduate students.