The summer term 2023 was a contemplating one for the Kitchen. Among the many tasks and projects that we find ourselves occupied with, we hardly found time for (digital) Kitchen meetings. And yet, the sessions that took place (27th April and 8th June) were necessary to gain a new perspective on the organisation of the Kitchen.
Our first meeting in April made clear that the Kitchen STS needs a non-digital place and face-to-face encounters. However, since not all of us are located in Frankfurt and some appreciate the possibility to join the sessions from where they are, the Kitchen needs a hybrid format. Also, discussing selected literature felt like an additional task and we lost focus on the many exciting projects from STSers in Frankfurt. So let’s discuss more of what is going on here!
In our second session in June we invited everyone to present bits and pieces of their current project. Juliana (Lancaster) talked about her PhD on cybersecurity, Johannes (Frankfurt) about open educational resources, Tessa (Frankfurt) about her thesis on food savers, Carly (Frankfurt) about wetland creation and restoration, Vera (Frankfurt) about biocyborgs and painkillers, and Markus (Frankfurt) about national parks. The open format made it easier for everyone to join the lively exchange of ideas, associations, and literature for further reading.
As the “third session” (13th July) we invited to join the LaSST lecture given by one of the brightest minds in STS: Lucy Suchman. Her talk on “Demilitarisation, open worlds, and reparative futures” was timely, inspiring, and left us with enough intellectual stuff to chew on for the the upcoming Kitchen STS sessions.
Two years have passed since the COVID-19 pandemic hit us. Several waves of rapidly increasing numbers of infections rolled over us, and the current wave (at least in Germany) just doesn’t seem to subside. During the last two years, studying and teaching was mostly mediated by our computer screens. At one point the digital fatigue demanded us to make cuts in our digital activities and so, the Kitchen STS blog went silent. However, this doesn’t mean that we haven’t been gathering, chatting and discussing what’s going on in STS – quite the contrary!
Linking the question on what “non-English linguistic repertoire” STS can engage with, our next session turned to Indigenous STS. For this, we read Jessica Kolopenuk’s “Miskâsowin: Indigenous Science, Technology, and Society” (2020) who spontaneously even joined our session.
In our last session of the term, we talked about “The Whiteness of AI” by Stephen Cave and Kanta Dihal (2020), which highlighted how machines can be racialised.
For the summer term 2021, we continued our discussions in critical STS and what better way to do this with the newly published book by Max Liboiron on “Pollution is Collonialism” (2021).
In the second session, we had the opportunity to discuss with Susan L. Erikson her works on the use of mobile phones for contact tracing during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa (2018), and a contemporary study on contact tracing of COVID-19 (2020).
The last session was dedicated to one of our more general discussions, plans, our own projects and upcoming events.
The last term, winter 2021/2022, started off with a lecture by David Ribes on “Sedimentary Legacy for Research Infrastructures: From Natural to Socioecological”. It introduced our broader theme on “infrastructures and STS”.
It is rare but this term we met for a fourth session in which we did a nice round of introductions, discussed projects, and talked about the future of the Kitchen STS.
Looking back on these last three semesters, a lot was going on: New people joined the Kitchen, scholars were invited, gave talks, and we read amazing articles! The many projects, interests, and resources that people bring to the Kitchen always surprise us and we will continue to keep the Kitchen as lively as possible.
Looking ahead on the semesters to come, we can say that there are wonderful events going to happen! Knowing that many Kitcheners have left Frankfurt, we will keep our digital meeting space. However, we also hope that we can gather in our Kitchen again and share cookies, drink tea, and create a hybrid Kitchen space. Maybe we all become Cyborg Cooks?
The term started with an empty kitchen and is about to end with an almost empty kitchen. Our Kitchen STS discussions have more or less successfully gone virtual and we can look back at three great sessions. Huge thanks to Carolin, Kevin, and Mara, who did all the preparations as they are our local experts about pandemics and global health!
The discussed literature provided a good introduction into STS and (Global) Public Health. We engaged in many different questions and streams of discussion that are intersting for STS debates: The problem of knowledge production, (un)safe knowledge, conflicting viewpoints, biopolitics, environmental impacts and planetary, more-than-human health concepts, to name a few.
Here is the list of literature which we discussed:
Sariola, S.; Engel, N.; Montgomery, C.; Kingori, P. (2017) STS and Global Health. In: Science & Technology Studies 30 (3): 2-12.
Kelly, A. (2018) Ebola vaccines, evidentiary charisma and the rise of global health emergency research. In: Economy and Society 47 (1): 135-161.
Farman, A.; Rottenburg, R. (2019) Measures of future health,from the nonhuman to the planetary. An introductory essay. Medicine Anthropology Theory 6 (3): 1–28.
As some of us are already preparing for the joint virtual 4S/EASST conference in August we thought that, given the current COVID-19 regulations about physical meetings, we would kindly invite to a pre-conference hang out some time before the official start of the conference on 18th August 2020 and/or a post-conference hang out some time after the conference. If you are interested in such meetings please write us an email.
If you are allowed to walk through the
corridors of the PEG building these days you find shut doors, no lights, no
people around. The kitchen on the 3rd floor is empty. What a
comfortable study environment this would be; but without students? The pandemic
makes us realize many things, good ones but also fatal ones. Some proclaim the
next big economic crisis, some fear a rising authoritarianism, others focus on
the more hopeful stories on decreasing environmental pollution or the “long
due” digitalisation of work. In the academic world, “flash calls” became a
quick response, as well as the many openings of access to scientific papers and
even books. What else happens during such a state of exception?
Our own response to it is not new, but still new enough for the kitchen STS. We will hold this terms’ sessions online! As most of our seminars are virtual already, we thought that this would be the most appropriate way of dealing with the current situation. Also, we think that our discussion group could benefit from trying out the possibility for remote participation – maybe even from our own kitchens at home. Taking a look at this years’ 4S/EASST conference in Prague, we believe that a virtual kitchen STS can help to practice and organise virtual panels, as well.
For the start, we will organise a Zoom-meeting on 29. April 2020 at 18:00h (6pm, CEST). If you want to join, please register on our list or write us an e-mail.
We are happy to announce the visit of Dr. Tara Mehrabi from Karlstad University who will be talking about and discussing with us her work on “Queer Ecologies of Death in the Lab: Rethinking Waste, Decomposition and Death Through a Queerfeminist Lens”.
Since the kitchen area is very popular these days, we will be meeting in room 3G.202 (on the other end of the corridor) – as usually at 6 pm.
Tara is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Gender Studies at Karlstad University, Sweden. She is a founding member of the Queer Death Studies Network and a member of The Posthumanities Hub based at Linköping University. She is the author of the monograph Making Death Matter: A Feminist Technoscience Study of Alzheimer’s Sciences in the Laboratory (2016). Together with Marietta Radomska and Nina Lykke, she co-edited the special issue of the journal Women, Gender & Research “Queer Death Studies: Coming to Terms with Death with Death, Dying and Mourning Differently” (2019).
This semester’s last kitchen STS session takes place on July 10th, at 6pm – just this once not in the kitchen area but in room PEG 2.G 107. We will discuss the work of Lynn Margulis, more specifically the Gaia hypothesis she formulated togehter with James Lovelock and her concept of symbiogenesis as an alternative to the (neo) Darwinist theory of evolution.
Looking forward to seeing many of you next week’s session – which we will round off with some semester closing drinks in the Sommergarten afterwards!
This month, our regular kitchen STS meeting will be replaced by an exciting outward event. On Wednesday, June 19th at 10 a.m., Gay Hawkins is here to discuss with us her recent work on plastic and material politics in a colloquium at the Institut für sozial-ökologische Forschung (ISOE) in Bockenheim. The event is organized by the PlastX research group and is an accompanying event to their lecture series “Living in the Plastic Age“.
On the same day, Gay Hawkins also gives a public talk on “Plastic as a Political Material” as part of this lecture series. It takes place at Campus Westend in room HZ 3 (Hörsaalzentrum) at 4 p.m.
If you’re interested in participating in the colloquium, please send an email to Josef or me in advance, so that we can inform the organizers about the number of participants from the kitchen STS discussion group.
In our next session, to be held on May 15th, we’ll be discussing a chapter from John Hartigan’s recent book Care of the Species (2017). The text is an intriguing proposal for and a thorough exploration of “How to Interview a Plant”, developed throughout the author’s ethnographic field research in botanical gardens.
Looking forward to seeing many of you on Wednesday 15th at 6pm in the kitchen area at PEG 3G 204!
Dear kitchen people. As most of you already know, Endre has left Frankfurt for a professorship in Munich. Even though we will truly miss him, Kitchen STS continuous. Franziska von Verschuer and I are taking care of the institution Kitchen STS has become thanks to Endre and others. For organizational reasons, however, we have to move our meetings to Wednesday evenings. We hope this works for as many of you as possible. We are looking forward to an exciting semester and hope to see many of you at our first meeting in our kitchen (PEG 3G 204) at 6pm on April 17.
In our next session, to be held on the 24th January, we’ll be discussing a manuscript by James Maguireand Brit Ross Winthereik – both from the IT University in Copenhagen. It’s about ‘datafication’ and the role data centres play in the ongoing digitalisation of the Danish state. Please send Endre an email to get a PDF.
Looking forward to seeing many of you at 6pm on Thursday the 24th, in PEG 3G 204.
