STS Lab Seminar – 22/6 – David Ribes – Machineries of Similarity and Difference: AIDS from its Research Infrastructures
Loïc Riom
Dear colleagues,
You are warmly invited to the next session of the STS Lab seminar, which will take place on Monday, June 22, from 12:00 to 14:00, in room Géopolis 2218.
https://www.unil.ch/events/fr/1775810678029
We look forward to seeing you there,
Chloé Schaer, Annabella Zamora and Loïc Riom
Thursday, June 22 2026 – 12:00 to 14:00 – Géopolis Room 2218
Machineries of Similarity and Difference: AIDS from its Research Infrastructures
David Ribes, University of Washington
What kinds of practical and epistemic work are required to draw together different kinds of data, people, and evidence? This talk examines 'interoperability' by tracing the history of three AIDS cohort studies that, over three decades, were gradually merged into a single research network. Today, with a double-click, researchers can combine data collected from gay and bisexual men in the 1980s with materials gathered from women in the North of the US beginning in the 1990s and in the South of the US in the 2010s—data that remain scientifically comparable. Yet today's apparent ease reveals next to nothing about the political protests and scientific disputes that made such comparability possible. The interoperability of these AIDS research data rests on decades of negotiation over how blood, data, and human participants could be rendered equivalent.
Bio
David Ribes is professor in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) and director of the Science, Technology and Society Studies (STSS) program at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is a sociologist of science and technology who focuses on the development and sustainability of research infrastructures; their relation to long-term changes in the conduct of science; and, transformations in objects of research. David is a regular contributor to the fields of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Information Studies. His methods are ethnographic, archival-historical and comparative. See davidribes.com or dataecologi.es for more.
Discussion : Anna Jobin , Professeur·e assistant·e à Human-IST - Sciences et Technologies de l'Interaction centrée sur l'Humain de l'Université de Fribourg.