stsing: Doing STS In, Through And Beyond The German Academic System

With this presentation, we introduce the recently constituted association "stsing", which offers scholars a new platform to "do" STS in and through Germany (therefore the wording "stsing"). Specific about this platform is its attempt at creative and open understanding of collaboration on the one hand and critical reflection of national, international, institutional, and intergenerational challenges of STS research on the other. Germany's specific funding and institutional structure is of central importance to stsing. Still, stsing is responding to the internationally integrated practices of STS. It addresses the frictions between local bureaucracies and hierarchies as well as global doings and (self-)understandings of STS.  

We briefly unfold the (hi)story of stsing: a process of negotiating imaginaries, institutional settings, conflicts and mutual recognition. The challenge is to open spaces and account for the heterogeneous people and disciplines engaged with the ideas, methodologies and politics of STS. stsing experiments with digital as well as analogue infrastructures of assembly that account for a "bubble-like" structure. It draws on thematic "working groups" and regional "table rounds", engages with digital platforms and explores non-proprietary software options. An experimental form of associat(ing) then faces multiple challenges. We focus on one example: intergenerational matters of the academic system and the distribution of resources. Here, stsing aims for a non-hierarchical setup while reflecting on the institutional architectures that set the terms on which we operate (regarding career steps, thought schools, modes of recognition, etc.).