The Science and Technology Studies (STS) (formerly known as the Science, Technology, and Society (STS)) program is an interdisciplinary field of research that uses historical, philosophical, and social scientific methods to investigate the intellectual, material, and social facets of the scientific, technological, engineering and mathematical (STEM) disciplines. It encompasses a broad spectrum of STS topics including interdisciplinary studies of ethics, equity, governance, and policy issues that are closely related to STEM disciplines, including medical science.
STS research seeks to understand how scientific knowledge is produced and sanctioned, and how it is challenged and changes. It examines the theoretical foundations of science, brings to light underlying presuppositions and alternative interpretations, and assesses the reliability of research methods. It investigates how materials, devices and techniques are designed and developed; how and by whom they are diffused, used, adapted and rejected; how they are affected by social and cultural environments; and how they influence quality of life, culture and society. It also considers how socio-cultural values are embedded in science and technology, and how issues of governance and equity evolve with the development and use of scientific knowledge and technological artifacts. In addition, it explores relationships between STEM and fundamental social categories including race and gender, poverty and development, trust and credibility, participation and democracy, health and pathology, risk and uncertainty, globalization and environmental concerns.
The program encourages research that furthers STS as a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field, including, but by no means limited to the following:
- Research on the social organization of scientific work and how this shapes the production of knowledge and its intellectual and social impacts.
- Research on the historical, conceptual and methodological foundations of any of the natural, social or engineering sciences including their foundations, origins or place in modern society.
- Mixed methods approaches and other approaches that integrate multiple STS perspectives with each other or with innovative approaches from the arts or humanities.
- Interdisciplinary projects on topics of broad societal concern that engage in integrative, collaborative research involving at least one STS expert and at least one expert in some other STEM field, with prospective outcomes that serve to advance both fields.
- STS projects that contribute to NSF's research-focused Big Ideas, or that contribute to other pertinent initiatives such as Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2), Science of Broadening Participation and ADVANCE.
The STS program supports several distinct types of proposals in order to accommodate the diverse research needs of the STS community. Types of proposals include Standard Research Grants and Grants for Collaborative Research, Scholars Awards, Conference Support, and Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants.
Previously funded projects may be viewed at: https://nsf.gov/awardsearch/advancedSearchResult?ProgEleCode=7603&BooleanElement=Any&BooleanRef=Any&ActiveAwards=true&#results.
The STS program strongly encourages research that addresses complex socio-technical and techno-scientific problems from multiple perspectives that capture the different social facets of the problem. These social facets may include ethics, policy, governance, justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, race, gender, trust, reliability, risk and uncertainty, sustainability, user-centeredness, and globalization. The goal is to bring different disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives to the problem and thereby make use of a variety of theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches. Some examples of questions that address such problems may include, but are by no means limited to, the following: