Cornell University

Graduate SchoolGraduate School

Graduate SchoolFields of Study

Science and Technology Studies

Field Description

Science and Technology Studies is a growing academic field dedicated to historical and social analysis of science and engineering. STS builds on humanistic and social science traditions to examine systematically the social and cultural dimensions of science and technology (including health, medicine, and environmental science). Ph.D. students explore topics at the cutting edge of science and technology studies and learn how to conduct empirically-grounded research on science and technology in historical and/or contemporary contexts. The field thus contributes to our understanding of the place of science and technology in societies, with attention to historical, sociological, philosophical, and political issues.

The field has specific course requirements. All students are expected to take, prior to their Admission to Candidacy examination, four specifically introductory theoretical and methodological courses in three of four subject areas: history, philosophy, sociology, and politics of science and technology, as well as a one-semester seminar intended as an introduction to the field as a whole. At least four of the courses taken during the student's first year should be Science and Technology Studies courses.

Students are expected to achieve a level of competence in at least one foreign language sufficient for reading the literature in their research area. The Special Committee will decide how this competence is to

Contact Information

Website: http://www.sts.cornell.edu
Email: stsgradfield@cornell.edu
Phone: 607 255-6234

303 Morrill Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY  14853

Data and Statistics

Field Manual

Subject and Degrees

Science and Technology Studies

Concentrations by Subject

Science and Technology Studies

  • history and philosophy of science and technology
  • social studies of science and technology

Faculty

Tarleton Gillespie

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: digital copyright; technology and cultural participation; critical discourse of technology; new media and society; law, policy, and technological change

Stephen H. Hilgartner

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: social dimensions and politics of contemporary and emerging science and technology; social studies of the life sciences; property regimes; risk

T. J. Hinrichs

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: Chinese medicine and healing

Steven Jackson

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: Information technology; information policy analysis; knowledge, power, and practice in science, technology and medicine

Stacey A. Langwick

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: medical anthropology; post-colonial science studies; politics of knowledge and materiality; anthropology of the body

Christine Leuenberger

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: classical and contemporary sociological theory; sociology of knowledge; sociology of culture; medical sociology; interaction sociology; gender studies; science studies; social studies of the human; and behavioral sciences

Karen Levy

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: surveillance and privacy; law and technology; social control and regulation; social, organizational, and ethical contexts of technological systems; marginalization

Bruce Voss Lewenstein

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: history and evaluation of public communication of science and technology; models of science communication; documentation and history of contemporary science

Michael E Lynch

  • Campus: Ithaca - (Graduate School Professor)
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: sociology of science and technology; ethnomethodology; criminal justice practices; sociology of mental disorder

Paul Nadasdy

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: aboriginal people and the state; arctic/sub-arctic studies; hunter-gatherer studies; anthropology of science and knowledge; politics of wildlife management; environmental/ecological anthropology

Juno Salazar Parrenas

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: feminist science studies, environmental humanities, critical development studies, and global political economy

Alison G Power

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: ecology of agricultural systems, with emphasis on pest management

Rachel Prentice

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: anthropology of science and technology, particularly the intersection of digital technologies and medicine; medical anthropology; social studies of medical education, engineering, and computer science; virtual worlds

Sara B. Pritchard

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: history of technology; environmental history; modern France and French Empire

Jessica R. Ratcliff

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: history of science and technology; 17th-19th century Britain

Courtney Roby

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: Literature of Greek and Roman science and technology, reception of Greek technology in the Roman world, literary and social aspects of ancient science, Latin literature of the early Empire, Second Sophistic literature, Latin pedagogy

Margaret Walsh Rossiter

  • Campus: Ithaca - (Graduate School Professor)
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: history of women scientists; history of agricultural science; history of American science in the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries

Phoebe J Sengers

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: critical technical practices; technology and consumer culture; human-computer interaction; sustainability and technology design; subsistence communities in Newfoundland

Suman Seth

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: history of physical sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries; gender science; science, colonialism, and nationalism

Rebecca Slayton

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: computing and military technology

Noah Tamarkin

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: science and technology studies, political and legal anthropology, ethnography, South Africa, citizenship and belonging, race, ethnicity and religion, Diaspora, and indigeneity gender and sexuality Jewish studies

Marina A. Welker

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: Corporations and capitalism, international development, extractive industries, tobacco. Area: Southeast Asia (insular and mainland, especially Indonesia, Burma, Thailand), USA.

Malte Ziewitz

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Science and Technology Studies: history and philosophy of science and technology; social studies of science and technology
  • Research Interests: Information Technology