Overview
The transdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) emerged in the 1970s out of growing concern about the social and political effects of scientific and technological developments. Engaging with the human dimensions of science and technology, STS uses methods from a variety of perspectives associated with the humanities and social sciences. Faculty in our MA program come from English, Geography, History, Philosophy, Sociology, the School of Journalism, and the Faculty of Education. Topics for STS study include: how laboratories work, how to understand the development of scientific practices and technological objects in social context, examination of the ethics of science and technology, analysis of expertise and authority of science in democracies, understanding relations between science and public policy, and exploring representations of science and technology.
What makes the program unique?
The Science and Technology Graduate Program is one of only two such programs in Canada, and the first to be housed in an Arts faculty. We have more than twenty full-time faculty in the program, with internationally recognized scholars who are committed to teaching and research. The small size of our program means that each student receives full attention and supervision. In addition, students benefit from our STS Colloquium Series which features prominent scholars from around the world. Our past visitors include: Lorraine Daston, Evelyn Fox Keller, Bruno Latour, Stephen Shapin, Isabelle Stengers, and many more.
Quick Facts
Research Supervisors
Supervision
Students in research-based programs usually require a faculty member to function as their thesis supervisor. Please follow the instructions provided by each program whether applicants should contact faculty members.
Instructions regarding thesis supervisor contact for this program
Advice and insights from UBC Faculty on reaching out to supervisors
These videos contain some general advice from faculty across UBC on finding and reaching out to a supervisor. They are not program specific.
This list shows faculty members with full supervisory privileges who are affiliated with this program. It is not a comprehensive list of all potential supervisors as faculty from other programs or faculty members without full supervisory privileges can request approvals to supervise graduate students in this program.
- Anger, Suzy (Victorian Literature, Literature and Philosophy, Victorian Literature and Psychology, Victorian Literature and Science, Hermeneutics)
- Arefin, Mohammed (Human geography; History of sciences and technology (except medicine and health care); urban geography; discard studies; urban political ecology; Environmental justice; waste; sanitation; geographical political economy)
- Barnes, Trevor (Vancouver)
- Bartha, Paul (Philosophy of sciences and technologies; Environmental philosophy; philosophy of science; Philosophy of Probability; Confirmation; Decision Theory)
- Beatty, John Henry (Socio-political dimensions of genetics and evolutionary biology)
- Bergmann, Luke (Social and economic geography; Geomatics; Globalization)
- Berryman, Sylvia (Philosophy; Ancient Greek natural philosophy; Aristotle's ethics; Philosophy, History and Comparative Studies)
- Bowers, Katherine (Literature and literary studies, n.e.c.; Arts, Literature and Subjectivity; Arts and Cultural Traditions; Arts and Technologies; Dostoevsky; Russian literature; genre; Digital Humanities; Computational text analysis; gothic fiction; imagined geography; literary culture; narrative; Russian culture; the novel; Environmental Humanities)
- Brain, Robert (History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History)
- Callison, Candis (changes to media practices and platforms, journalism ethics, the role of social movements in public discourse, and understanding how issues related to science and technology become meaningful for diverse publics.)
- Christopoulos, John (Historical studies; Early modern Europe; History of pre-modern medicine; Social and cultural history of early modern Italy)
- Dick, Alexander (Literary or Artistic Work Analysis; Philosophy, History and Comparative Studies; Artistic and Literary Theories; Arts, Literature and Subjectivity; British Romanticism; Scottish Enlightenment; Literature and Economics; Literature and the Environment; Literature and Science; Scottish Literature)
- Frank, Adam (American literatures; American literature and media, affect theory, modernism, science and technology studies)
- Gusterson, Hugh Phillimore (Other studies in human society, n.e.c.; militarism; drug policies and cultures; Science Policy; nuclear weapons; ethnography)
- Hill, Ian (rhetoric, persuasion, argumentation, technology, weapons, interrogation, political economy, war rhetoric, conflict rhetoric, dissent, mass movements )
- Iurascu, Ilinca (Comparative literatures; Theories of cultural studies; Media, visual and digital culture; German literature; Comparative Literature; Cultural Studies; media theory; Media history; critical theory; film studies)
- Johnston, Kirsty (Dramatic literature and theatre history with particular interest in disability arts and intersections between health, disability and performance )
- Karimi, Aryan (Race and ethnic relations; Sociological methodology and research methods; Sociology and social studies of science and technology; Social relations; migration and refugee studies; ethnic and racial boundaries studies; assimilation, integration, transnationalism; Research methods)
- Kemple, Thomas (Social and cultural theory, history of social sciences, literary and interpretive methods, aesthetic sociology, visual representation of concepts and arguments)
- Kojevnikov, Alexei (Modern history of science, especially physics, science, society,and culture, Russia and Soviet History, Nuclear History and the Cold War)
- Macfarlane, Allison (Research, science and technology policy; science and technology policy; energy policy, nuclear energy, nuclear waste management; regulation)
- Mawani, Renisa (Sociology; Colonial Legal History; critical theory; Oceans and Maritime Worlds; Philosophy, History and Comparative Studies; Race and Racism; Time and Temporality)
- Mole, Christopher (Philosophical psychology (including moral psychology and philosophy of action); attention; Philosophy of Psychiatry; Philosophy of Literature)
- Nardizzi, Vin (Renaissance literature , ecotheory, queer and disability studies)
- Oberg, Gunilla (Use of knowledge in environmental decision making, Chlorine biogeochemistry in soil)
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