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Call for Contributions Queer STS Forum #8: Queer-Feminist Inclusion and Visibility

Call for Contributions: Queer STS Forum #8: Queer-Feminist Inclusion and Visibility – Overcoming Stories of Exclusion and Invisibility in Science, Education and Technology

Editors: Jenny Schlager & Anita Thaler

In our last Forum #7 we opened a discourse around “academic kindness” as queer-feminist intervention in contemporary violent and hierarchical working cultures and actualization of a feminist ethics of care. By looking closer at different levels of application of academic kindness, in pedagogical settings and research practices, we stumbled upon the notion of inclusion, and wondered why even in equity driven settings (non-)human actors are excluded.

Noticing practices of exclusion and making (non-)humans invisible, we find that especially now in time of multiple crises, we need to overcome traditional dichotomies and the delegitimization of certain forms of knowledges. We need to change our discourses of socio-eco-technological transformation by telling stories together and valuing situated knowledges (Haraway 2016; Rohracher 2022).

And we have so many questions and points of discussion: How inclusive are participatory research projects actually? How can we reach out to vulnerable groups in our communities in citizen science activities? How can we overcome boundaries and limitations and be truly welcoming in our educational settings? How can we overcome learning practices, which cultivate “epistemological assimilation” and move towards “epistemic diversity” (McNeill et al. 2022)? How can we offer save spaces and brave spaces (Arao & Clemens 2013) for LGBTQIA+? Which roles play architecture, infrastructure and technologies (Boys 2022)? How can we engage in multispecies activities (Haraway 2016; Petitt & Brandt-Off 2022)? In other words: How can we overcome stories of invisibility (Leyva et al. 2022)?

We are not the first ones asking these questions. We know that there is a lot of valuable knowledge and practical experience in the world already. Therefore, we invite our queer STS community and friends to combine these questions, maybe think even further, and acknowledge previous work: What can we learn from disability studies, from critical race scholars and practitioners working inclusively for decades and helping us with our vision of a queer-inclusive science and technology? What can we learn from feminists and artists thinking and doing museums queer inclusively (Grácio et al. 2020)? What can we learn from multispecies ethnographers working on multispecies communities of social learning (Petitt & Brandt-Off 2022)? What can we learn from educators who broaden up participation in STEM fields among students minoritized by race, gender, and/or sexuality (McNeill et al. 2022)?

We are explicitly interested in practical and empirical implementations of queer-feminist inclusion and visibility. How can it actually look like, how can it be done? We invite contributions from research papers to creative formats using audios, videos, images, texts – to illuminate and share queer-feminist inclusive ideas and experiences in science, education and technology for a multi-media open access publication opportunity in our Queer STS Forum #8/2023.

Please send abstracts describing your idea in 1000 to 2500 signs (blanks included) until April 3rd to forum@queersts.com.

Time schedule for issue #8 in 2023

  • Call for contributions: March 2023
  • Deadline for submitting abstracts: April 3rd
  • Feedback on your abstracts: April 14th
  • Submission of first full version of contributions: May 31st
  • Review feedback: August 31st
  • Submission final version of contribution: October 1st
  • Planned date of publication: November-December 2023