STS Labs and Clinics Panel Abstract

In this panel, we stage a conversation about STS pedagogy based on experiences of creating new spaces for doing STS in and outwith institutions: Labs and Clinics. We think these critical formations through five big themes, discussed across all presenters in turn. Our hope is the conversational format allows for shared experiences to emerge. We first discuss space: what difference does it make to make physical space for STS – permanently or temporarily –within institutions, and what kind of difference does it make to educators and students? Second, what are the institutional affordances of doing STS pedagogy where you are? This may be a disciplinary question, but it is also one that foregrounds situated techniques of intervention in communities of practice within and beyond the university. Third, politics, or the stakes, consequences and ambitions of the Lab / Clinics in their pedagogical aims. Fourth, returning to materiality, are there objects you make, work with or need? How do these  artifacts shape and inform the pedagogical possibilities? Fifth, we take student engagement as a long term lesson in the kinds of pedagogies needed where we are. We will reflect on what Labs and Clinics have taught us about how we bring STS sensitivities to our STS pedagogies.