Workshop on comparative methods in STS

[Gabriel Dorthe]

Dear students, colleagues and friends,

We are pleased to invite you to a workshop on comparative methods in STS with our colleague, Dr. Hilton Simmet (Research Associate at the Research Institute for Sustainability at GFZ, Potsdam, Germany).

The workshop is organized by the Professorship for Ethics, Technology and Society in the Department of Humanities, and Social and Political Sciences at ETH Zürich, and will take place on April 30, 13:30 to 15:30, at ETH Zürich (building RZ, Room F1).

Please see below for an abstract and our guest's short bio.

The workshop will be based on pre-circulated readings that will be shared with registered participants one week before the workshop.

If you are interested, you are most welcome to join us! Please sign up by sending a short note to gabriel...@gess.ethz.ch.

Best regards,

Dr. Gabriel Dorthe
Senior Scientific Assistant
Professorship for Ethics, Technology and Society
D-GESS (Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences)
ETH Zürich, Switzerland
https://ets.ethz.ch



Interrogating Globalizations: An Introduction to Comparative Methods in STS

Globalization has brought with it numerous transformations in how we live, move, produce and exchange. Developments in science and technology (S&T), in particular, have led to a view of the world as flat--as technoscientific "networks" propagated through universalizing "centers of calculation" erase differences in ideas, institutions and sociopolitical dynamics across cultures. This flattening resulted in lines of critical efforts in STS to interrogate the construction of (actor) networks, "flows" in global systems, as manifesting the social hegemonies of "capitalism," "patriarchy," "neoliberalism," or "neocolonialism." In this seminar, we will critically interrogate these discourses and counter-discourses of globalization by drawing on comparative methods in STS.

Against the claims of flattening the globe, whether by epistemic or political means, STS comparison reveals the enduring relevance of culture, especially national policy cultures, in the development of S&T. In particular, the comparative and coproductionist study of apparently global technoscience formations such as climate science or economic development reveals key differences in how publics problematize both knowledge and norms across cultural contexts. These differences suggest in turn the need for a deeper engagement with local context, institutions and political cultures to resist the flattenings of globalization and its critiques--and uncover a more emancipatory vision of S&T in society.


Hilton Simmet

Hilton Simmet is a Research Associate at the Research Institute for Sustainability and affiliate of the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard Kennedy School. Hilton studied social theory and physics (A.B.) at Harvard College and political theory (M.A.) at Yale University. In 2025, he completed his Ph.D. in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, where he specialized in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and development economics. Drawing on this training, Hilton explores the role that scientific and technical expertise play in developing solutions to problems of poverty, inequality and development. His dissertation analyzed how leading inequality economists in the US, France and India developed disparate research methods-randomized controlled trials (RCTs), distributional national accounts and "action-oriented" research-consistent with local understandings of justice and social welfare. At RIFS, Hilton is looking at the emergence of the "growth paradigm" in economic thought, and how technology has been conceived as a solution to the problem of planetary limits. He will also develop his ongoing research on the politics of the energy transition in Europe and the global South.