The STS Futures Lab at the Intersection of Research and Pedagogy

The STS Futures Lab at James Madison University is a fun and intellectually stimulating space where faculty and students collaborate on cross-disciplinary STS research and pedagogy. A key dimension of this work involves imagining and critically interrogating plausible sociotechnical futures through a blend of scenario analysis, design fiction, and anticipatory ethical reasoning, in the interest of supporting holistic problem solving, anticipatory governance, and responsible innovation. Through the STS Futures Lab, innovations in STS pedagogy have begun to inform a reconceptualization of STS theories and methods concerning socio-technical integration, knowledge production, expertise, and critical participation.

This exhibit highlights the Lab’s engagement with critical STS pedagogies in STEM curricula, its involvement of STEM students and collaborations with STEM faculty, and its new Co-Imagining Futures research project. In this project, the Lab invites experts from various disciplines to collaborate on scenario analysis and design fiction as a way to develop interactional expertise. Essays and artifacts in this exhibit include images, video clips, audio clips, interview excerpts, examples of scenario analyses and design fictions, and publications. We examine and reflect on the possibilities and constraints of play and collaborative making in developing critical thinking and interactional expertise, in developing tools for anticipatory governance of emerging technologies, and in developing multidisciplinary collaborations that produce new knowledge at the intersection of pedagogy and research.