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Literature is available here.

The password is "STS2026".

Difficulties? Email francis@francislee.org.

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This exercise has been inspired by Dumit, J (2018) Writing the Implosion Cultural Anthropology 29(2) 344-362 http://doingsts.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/dumit-implosion.pdf)

Step 1: Identify an object you want to implode – a very concrete one – from your research project.

Step 2: Implode it: Ask questions about “how is the world in ‘it’ and how is ‘it’ in the world” (see Dumit (2018) 351-4 for inspiration, if you want). Think through questions about different dimensions of its entanglement – labour, professional, epistemological, material, technological, contextual, political, economic, textual, biological, historical, educational,  mythological, symbolic… (if you want to read more on implosion, see*)

Step 3: Map your answers – literally. Make a visual diagram that you can show to the class when you present this (feel free to use paper and coloured pens, or presentation software, or take inspiration from this article: Crawford, K. and V. Joler (2018) Anatomy of an AI system, (https://anatomyof.ai)

Step 4: Think about the areas you have mapped. Then think about the spaces between them. Reflect in writing and for the class discussion on how (methodologically) you would be able to say something about the spaces that are now blank. What is missing from your study, and how would you address it?

Step 5: Present it during the last session of the course.

* on implosion: see: Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium. FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse™. Feminism and Technoscience (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), p.12.

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EASST

4S

Nordic STS Journal

Science Technology Human Values

Societies for the Social Studies of Science

Social Studies Science

Catalyst

NORA

Body + Society

https://tapuya.org/

STS weekly

S+TS

BioSocieties

Valuation Studies

BD+S

AI and Society

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Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society

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Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society

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Often technologies - especially digital ones - rely on classification systems in their development and functionality. However, in their use these technologies then reify and reproduce those systems of classification. Yet classification systems have histories (not seldom ones that make us feel uncomfortable) and produce/reproduce power structures (sometimes problematic ones). How can we approach this analytically in existing technologies and take responsibility for the power of classification structures in our work with new technologies?

Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. Sorting Things out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. Intro + apartheid chapter

Lee, F., Hajisharig, S., Johnson, E. (2005). The ontological politics of synthetic data: Normalities, outliers, and intersectional hallucinations. Big Data & Society. 12(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517251318289

D’Ignazio & Klein 2019 The Numbers Don’t Speak for Themselves’ Chapter 6 in Data Feminism. Tillgängligt här: https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4660/Data-Feminism

Optional Reading

M’chark, Amade, Shramm, K. and Skinner, D. (2013) Topologies of Race: Doing territory, population and identity in Europe. ST& HV 39(4):468-487

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You think you have agency. Think again. This session problematizes how we think of agency as something to be had/possessed, as particularly human, and as singular.

Johnson, Jim [Latour, Bruno]. (1988) “Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer.” Social Problems 35, no. 3: 298–310. https://doi.org/10.2307/800624.

Barad, K. (1998) "Getting Real: Technoscientific Practices and the Materialization of Reality". Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 10: 2 87-128.

Suchman, L. (2023). The uncontroversial ‘thingness’ of AI. Big Data & Society, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231206794

Optional Reading

Suchman, L. (2007). Human-machine reconfigurations: plans and situated actions. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Chapter 13 and 15

Callon, Michel, and John Law. “Agency and the Hybrid Collectif.” South Atlantic Quarterly 94, no. 2 (1995): 481–507.

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Wed, 20 May, 2026

13.00-14:00: Session 1: Presentation round and a brief history of STS (Ericka & Francis)

14.15-15:00: Session 2: Ethnographies of digital systems (Francis)

15:00-15:30 Coffee & discussion

15:30-17:00 Session 3: Lecture and discussion, AI artefacts have politics (Ericka)

18:00 Dinner at Pelikan

Thu, 21 May, 2026

8:30-10:30 Session 4: Card catalogue exercis and lecture, Infrastructures and Classification (Francis & Ericka)

10:30-13:00 Session 5: Study visit, including free lunch at the study visit

13:00-13:30 Reflection on the study visit

13:30-15:00 Session 6a: Black box exercise and lecture, The making of realities (Ericka & Francis)

15:00-15:30 Coffee

15:30-17:00 Session 7: Relational agency (Francis & Ericka)

Free evening (in case you haven’t finished your implosion…)

Fri, 22 May, 2026

8:30-12:00 Session 8 (Examination): Present your implosion for the group

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Having read the following two articles in advance, you will be divided into small groups and asked to do a reflection exercise around the concepts introduced in them. Instructions will be given in the classroom.

Latour, Bruno. “The ‘Pédofil’ of Boa Vista.” Common Knowledge 4, no. 1 (1995): 144–87.

Goodwin, Charles. 1994. Professional Vision. American Anthropologist 96(3):606-633

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The unseen workers who help train self-driving cars to see.

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This session highlights that mathematical approaches to fairness are impossible, which points us to the importance of the situatedness of AI. And then the necessity of doing ethnographic and relational research on digital systems. An important takeaway is that we should go from analyzing “Machine Ethics,” where the algorithm is in focus, to analyzing how power is enacted with algorithmic systems.

Angwin, Julia, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu, and Lauren Kirchner. 2016. “Machine Bias: There’s Software Used across the Country to Predict Future Criminals. And It’s Biased against Blacks.” ProPublica. 2016. https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing.

Lee, Francis. “The Practices and Politics of Machine Learning: A Field Guide for Analyzing Artificial Intelligence.” AI & SOCIETY 40, no. 8 (2025): 6135–48. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-025-02430-7.

Sumpter, David. “Impossibly Unbiased.” In Outnumbered: From Facebook and Google to Fake News and Filter-Bubbles – the Algorithms That Control Our Lives, 59–70. London: Bloomsbury Sigma, 2018.

Vinge, S & Fjaestad, M (2025) Introduction: From Algocracy to democracy in Algorithmic Rule Akademikerförbundet SSR

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Join the e-mail list: https://groups.google.com/g/sts_sverige
More info here: https://swests.org/

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View details about Södertörns Högskola in Huddinge, Sweden on Apple Maps. Address, driving directions, images, nearby attractions and more.

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Venue is here: https://link.mazemap.com/XCaJ4Pbu

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Hi, My name is Julia and I'm a PhD student at Uni of Gothenburg. I'm really looking forward to this course!

You can find me here: https://www.gu.se/en/about/find-staff/julianorman

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Hi! I'm a Professor of Gender & Society at Linköping University, and currently working in a WASP-HS project on synthetic data. I also run the WASP-HS graduate school. I'm super happy so many of you wanted to take a course on STS for autonomous systems and AI! Please use the spaces to the right to introduce yourself and tell everyone a bit about your PhD research.

See you in Stockholm!

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In this session, we will map the evolution of STS, highlighting key readings and seminal concepts that have shaped this diverse field. Our exploration will be grounded in a recognition of the socio-technical assemblages and infrastructural underpinnings that make scientific and technological practices possible.We will draw a map of the foundational work that has critically examined how scientific knowledge and technological systems are constructed, maintained, and transformed.

Winner, Langdon (1980) Do Artifacts Have Politics? Daedalus 109(1):121-136

Haraway, Donna. 1987. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s.” Australian Feminist Studies 2 (4): 1–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.1987.9961538.

Star, Susan Leigh. 1990. “Power, Technology and the Phenomenology of Conventions: On Being Allergic to Onions.” The Sociological Review 38 (1 Supplement): 26–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1990.tb03347.x.

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Also: check out my Robot Meets Pet TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@robot_meets_pet

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🐱🤖The Robot Cat🤖🐱 (@robot_meets_pet) TikTok | Watch 🐱🤖The Robot Cat🤖🐱's Newest TikTok Videos

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🐱🤖The Robot Cat🤖🐱 (@robot_meets_pet) on TikTok | 140 Likes. 75 Fans. What happens when pets meet a robot?

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https://wasp-hs.org/

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Hi! I'm a Professor of Science & Technology Studies at Södertörn University. I lead a WASP-HS project on scientific knowledge production with AI. I'm so excited that you want to come explore the power and politics of science, technology, and AI with us!

You can find me here:

- https://francislee.org

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Hi, my name is Md Fahim Sikder, I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at Linköping University. I am working on algorithmic fairness and generative model to promote fair decision making. I am excited about this course.

More about my research:

- https://fahimsikder.com

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My name is Lucy (she/her), and I am a PhD Student in Technology and Health at the Division of Health Informatics and Logistics at KTH in Stockholm. My PhD research examines the socio-technical dimensions of AI in healthcare and eldercare.

More about me here:

https://www.kth.se/profile/mccarren

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18:00 Dinner at Pelikan, Blekingegatan 40 https://pelikan.se/ (covered by WASP-HS)

Please email email graduate.school@wasp-hs.org with your choice of meal.

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Linköping University, Department of Culture and Society

My research interests lie in STS, AI, and autonomous mobility, with a particular focus on the testing and evaluation of autonomous systems. My project, Testing Autonomy in Motion, examines how end users and beta testers actively assess and shape the perceived capabilities of autonomous vehicles in real traffic environments. The central focus is on how autonomy itself is produced and defined in situated interaction, and how this situated construction of autonomy configures the social acceptance of autonomous systems in practice.

For this course, I expect to deepen my theoretical and methodological engagement with STS approaches to AI, and to critically explore how entanglements between human and non-human actors can be studied in empirical settings such as mobility and infrastructure.

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Hi! My name is Sofia Hamberg and I'm a PhD student in Political Science at Linköping University. My field is within digital government and more specifically my project concerns the use of digital school platforms. I'm looking forward to this course and to see you all!

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Hi, my name is Ruijun Shi, and I am a PhD student in Sociology at Umeå University. My research interests focus on AI bias, particularly how algorithmic systems reproduce political, social, and cultural inequalities. I’m looking forward to the course and to meeting you all.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruijun-shi

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Hi, my name is Anastasiia, and I am a part of the Digital Work Futures Research Lab at Malmö University. I study generative AI in the everyday work practices of digital creative professionals, primarily using ethnographic methods. You can find me here: https://mau.se/en/persons/anastasiia.varetsa/

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Hi, my name is Svea Kiesewetter and I am a postdoctoral researcher at Södertörn University. I have explored educational data infrastructures during my PhD and am now involved in a project focusing on synthetic data practices.

You can find more about my work here: https://sveakiesewetter.com/

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Hi my name is Samantha Hookway, you can call me Sam. My pronouns are she/her. I am a 2nd year PhD student in Interaction Design at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg. I am a WASP-HS Affiliate and new to STS but finding that I have been exposed to many of the theories and authors in the literature list before this course and am glad to dig in more with you all. Previously, I taught for ca. 10 years at HDK-Valand Design at University of Gothenburg.

My project is currently having a title of "Smuggling Power: Fattening Agency in Human-AI Collaborative Design Practices" but as I am just a year in I am not sure if I will stick with that title or go in another direction entirely. Currently, I am working to articulate research on 4 different cases two of which come from my studio practice (www.studioalight.com): (1) "Vattenjagen" a MTHD approach and exhibition piece that creates an experience of communicating, collaborating with a lake (Vombsjön and Bolmen thusfar) and (2) "You've Been Rugged" (the locust of my implosion). Then also, the two non-studio AI + Interaction Design + Feminist perspectives cases are (3) The Genie Action Chatbot for an internal gender inclusion project (GENIE) here at Chalmers and (4) a case with Grok AI and auditing the legal agreements and mapping consent across the platform. Plus some others projects/cases that are brewing...

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Hi all! My name is Georgios Sideras. I’m a second-year PhD student at Ratio Institute and Lund University, Department of Technology and Society. My project looks at labour markets and income mobility in the age of technology, with a focus on technological change, job polarisation and insider–outsider dynamics.

In case you need an icebreaker, I love tennis and cinema, and my favourite book is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Looking forward to meeting everyone!

Contactinfo: https://ratio.se/medarbetare/georgios-sideras

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Hi, my name is Martin (he/him) and I'm pursuing a PhD in Media & Communication studies as Uppsala university. My research concerns existential perspectives on AI implementation within and outside newsrooms.

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Hi! My name is Hadia Nadeem and I am a Phd student at Stockholm School of Economics. My research focuses in AI adoption in procurement and i am particularly interested in the strategic and organisational challenges of AI adoption such as how procurement practices, decision-making, and human–AI collaboration evolve when AI technologies are implemented. I am looking forward to meet you all and learning from the course.

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Hi! My name is Molly Lundgren, and I'm a PhD student in media studies, here at Södertörn. My project looks at the relation between evaluation and valorisation, within the cluster 'The AI Welfare State'.

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Restaurant for dinner on Wed 20 May

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View details about Pelikan in Stockholm, Sweden on Apple Maps. Address, driving directions, images, nearby attractions and more.

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My name is Emelie Karlsson, and I am a doctoral student in political science at Uppsala University. My thesis looks at the nature and effects of media communication about digital election interference over time, electoral cycles and on outcomes such as trust and polarisation.

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My name is Jess and I use a participatory speculative design approach applied towards Global Political Studies. My thesis project goes on to query the appropriateness of AI systems to promote the health of our everyday transnational communities within digital spaces, and what areas the everyday user has political economy.

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Technology is politics with different means. This session focuses on the intertwining of technology, power, and AI drawing on historical and contemporary cases. It highlights the need for paying attention to the politics and practices of infrastructures and technology. Can technologies be inherently political?

Cockburn, Cynthia. “The Material of Male Power.” Feminist Review, no. 9 (1981): 41–58. https://doi.org/10.2307/1394914.

Crawford, Kate. Atlas of Ai: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021. Chapters 1, 3, & 4.

Kronblad, C (2025) Algorithmic injustice - Gothenburg’s miscoded school placement algorithm in Algorithmic Rule Akademikerförbundet SSR

Optional Reading

Hicks, Mar (2019) Hacking the CIS-tem. Transgender Citizens and the Early Digital State. IEEE Anals of the History of Computing https://marhicks.com/writing.html

Benjamin, R. 2019 Coded Exposure, Chapter 3 in Race After Technology Polity (part 1, pgs. 97-113).

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A basic assertion of many critical social science fields is that the nature/culture divide is both a false dichotomy and - more importantly - a dichotomy that is leveraged in debates for particular ideological purposes. What can we do with research which demonstrates this? How can we leverage a blurring or entanglement of these two concepts in our own work?

Collins, Harry M., and Trevor Pinch, eds. “A New Window on the Universe: The Non-Detection of Gravitational Radiation.” In The Golem: What You Should Know About Science, 2nd ed., 91–108. Canto Classics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107295612.010.

Buolamwini, Joy, and Timnit Gebru (2018). “Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classiﬁcation,” Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 81:1-15.

Optional Reading

D’Ignazio & Klein 2019 What gets counted counts’ Chapter 4 in Data Feminism. MIT Press. Tillgängligt här: https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4660/Data-Feminism

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Georgios Implosion slide

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1. Register for the course:  https://wasp-hs.org/16021-2/

2. Look over the whole schedule, and send us an email if anything is unclear.

3. Download the readings. The readings are available in the dropbox. See link to the right. The password is "STS2026".

4. Start reading! The course is based on your readings.

5. Make a presentation of yourself and add it to the right.

6. Choose your preferences for the dinner on day 1, and email graduate.school@wasp-hs.org (at the latest on 15 May)

7. Show up in Stockholm and explore with us!

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An in-person, three day course in Stockholm. Students should do the reading in advance.

Points: 3 HP

When/where: 20-22 May, 2026 (3 days, lunch-to-lunch), in at Södertörn University in Stockholm

Teachers: Francis Lee and Ericka Johnson

Participant limit: 30

Examination: Implosion presentation day three (Please prepare this ahead of time, using your research as viewed through the readings).

Interested? Send an email to francis@francislee.org or ericka.johnson@liu.se or describing what you are studying and how far along you are.

Register for the course here:  https://wasp-hs.org/16021-2/