Call for Abstracts: Swedish STS Conference 2026 (Malmö) - Deadline 15th April 2026

[Graham Minenor-Matheson]

Hi!

We have a panel accepted now for the Swedish STS Conference this coming 10-12 June in Malmö.  In keeping with the conference theme on Cross-Pollinations, Contamination, Collaboration, we are hosting a panel on “Collaboration in a time of geopolitical tension: navigating a post-ISS world for outer space relations” where we hope to receive submissions that explore what collaboration and tension mean for outer space when the International Space Station is de-orbited in 2030.  Please see the abstract for the panel below and we hope you will consider submitting something!  

Deadline is 15th April 2026.

Panel details:

Collaboration in a time of geopolitical tension: navigating a post-ISS world for outer space relations
 
Since the announcement in 2023 by NASA that the International Space Station would be decommissioned in 2030, the future of human presence in low earth orbit will be left to the commercial sector.  A symbol of international cooperation since its inception in 2000, the news that there will be no official collaboration between nation-states in outer space, leaves us with an open question as to what the future holds.  Geopolitical tensions between the United States and Russia and the United States and China have seen Russia begin to divest its interests in the ISS from 2024 and the Chinese government prevented from collaboration on the ISS to the extent that they have built their own space station, Tiangong.  Driven by competition and national interests, the narrative of space exploration favours conflict over collaboration, but as scholars such as Andrew Jenks (2021) have shown, this conflictual historical paradigm is not the only story.  The ISS has also been argued as being a place where power and prestige are demonstrated (Cashman and Lieberman 2023), but that reading simplifies the complex environment that NASA (and other space agencies) are required to navigate between the demands of nationalism, political desires for leadership and the pursuit of scientific inquiry.  Collaboration has been baked in to NASA from its inception with the ISS being the biggest and most spectacular example of international collaboration with over 4,000 scientific projects since 2,000 (Krige, Callahan and Maharaj 2013) but these geopolitical tensions and breakdowns in relations are being used as a lever to pursue the furtherance of commercialisation, seemingly abandoning decades of fruitful international collaboration.
 
The aim of this panel is to think about the consequences for a post-ISS world and highlight the importance of what collaboration has meant to a history of space exploration where the spectacle of conflict overshadows the materiality of operations on the ISS.  What have we learned about collaboration in space since the inception of the ISS?  What will the further commercialisation of LEO bring to the future of space?  How can collaboration work after the ISS?  In focusing on the commercialisation of space, what is NASA ignoring that has made the ISS such a symbol for the past twenty-six years?  What does the future hold for science in this new commercial phase?
 
Keywords: international space station, collaboration, outer space, knowledge, commercialisation

If this sounds of interest to you, please send an abstract of no more than 300 words to both Graham Minenor-Matheson (graham.mine...@liu.se) and Michael Godhe (michae...@liu.se).  If you have any questions, please email one or both of us!

Deadline for submissions (emailed to both of us) is 15th April 2026.

Swedish STS Conference Malmö Theme (See https://registration.invajo.com/7a7e8baa-b278-4293-bfbc-26cdea7b151d?page=9a92cc80-0e0d-4237-8a4a-49e6d86b8cdf for more info)  

Welcome to the 20th anniversary of the Swedish STS Conference that will be held at the NiagaraBbuilding in Malmö, 10-12 June 2026, and is hosted by Malmö University in collaboration with Lund University.

The Swedish STS Conference is an open, widely advertised, biennial conference, organised since 2006. It is an interdisciplinary meeting place for researchers interested in issues related to technology and science in society as approached from social science and humanities perspectives, and while it gathers researchers at all levels of their careers, it is planned and coordinated to particularly appeal to doctoral students and early career researchers, with special sessions and events catering to the concerns of junior colleagues.

Conference theme

The theme of the Swedish STS Conference 2026 is Cross-Pollinations, Contamination, Collaboration. With this theme, we aim to engage contributions to current situations in the world – as climate change, intelligent warfare, artificial intelligence, emerging infectious diseases and migration considerations. Different cultures, bodies, or technologies are part of a never-ending cross-pollination process, across seemingly unconnected theoretical domains, genres, and discursive communities. However, contamination always lures in the background, becoming a metaphor for interdependence, porosity, but also a space for discussion on conditions of (dis)ability and accessibility. Contamination also, in this context, becomes a way to decenter the human and interact with the world in more accountable and imaginative ways. A strength of the STS field that will be explored during the conference is its focus on the failures and successes, as well as following technological and scientific advances in all its different phases: inception, everyday use and death/demolition/extinction.

Collaborations characterise deeply how researchers in the field work. Interdisciplinarity is an everyday practice, including working across the “two cultures of science”. This division of science between natural and technical sciences versus social and humanities was identified by C.P. Snow already in 1959 as seriously hampering society’s ability to solve the world’s problems. For the field this carries the risk and the promise of cross-pollinations and contaminations with emerging new ways of doing science, innovative methods and models for engagement. As we face urgent challenges, the ability to reach out and interact across disciplines, and across the academia – society divide is a potential ground for building capacity for positive change. Thus, collaborations outside and inside Academia will be explored. We invite researchers to interrogate the values that underpin different modes of collaboration—what counts as legitimate knowledge, who gets to participate, and how boundaries are policed or transgressed. Further, contamination alludes to the imagined purity of science, at the same time as we know it is authentically implicated in what could be labelled contaminated practices. Having said this, without cross-pollination, contamination, collaboration with the wider society and various strategic stakeholders and communities, science risks losing its relevance and legitimacy.

We want presentations that open “Cross-Pollinations, Contamination and Collaboration” as keywords in science and technology. What forms of “Cross-Pollinations” can we see today? How are the developing in the future? How can we tackle “Contamination”? How are “Collaborations” forged, sustained and also broken down and abandoned?

Graham and Michael
 
Department of Thematic Studies
Technology and Social Change
Phone: (+46)70 838 5760
Visiting address: Temahuset, room A:317, Campus Valla
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