Science, Technology, and Society
Learn more about the encyclopedia
Meet the Editorial Board
Letter from the Editor in Chief
About the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society
With today’s overabundance of information, and misinformation, students and researchers alike can be overwhelmed when trying to identify what’s trustworthy, what’s up-to-date, and what’s accurate.
Oxford University Press will launch the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society to meet this challenge. We will publish long-form, peer-reviewed overview articles covering ethics and reproducibility, surveillance, the environment, artificial intelligence, knowledge production, public policy, and infrastructure, among many other topics.
Find information about the scholars who will shape the content of this exciting new resource.
The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society is part of the larger online Oxford Research Encyclopedias (OREs). OREs are dynamic digital encyclopedias which are continuously updated by a community of leading scholars and researchers.
Join the Oxford Research Encyclopedias Community
Oxford would like to invite you to join an engaged community of authors, scholars, librarians, and students to build a better reference platform of enduring academic values. Whether you wish to contribute, provide insights and recommendations, or simply ask a question, email us at sciencetechnologysociety.ore@oup.com to connect with the editorial team. We look forward to hearing from you.
Editorial Board
Editor in Chief
RAYVON FOUCHÉ
Rayvon Fouché holds a joint appointment as Professor of Communication Studies and Professor in the Medill School of Journalism, Media, and Integrative Marketing Communications. He authored or edited Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), Appropriating Technology: Vernacular Science and Social Power (University of Minnesota Press, 2004), Technology Studies (Sage Publications, 2008), the 4th Edition of the Handbook of Science & Technology Studies (MIT Press, 2016), and Game Changer: The Technoscientific Revolution in Sports (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017).
He was the inaugural Arthur Mollela Distinguished Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. Grants and awards from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Illinois Informatics Institute, Illinois Program for the Research in Humanities, University of Illinois' Center for Advanced Study, National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation have supported his research and teaching.
He previously held faculty appointments in the Science and Technology Studies Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the History Department and the Information Trust Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, the American Studies program in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Purdue University, and was a postdoctoral fellow in African & African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Most recently he served as Division Director of Social and Economic Sciences within the Directorate of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the National Science Foundation.
Editorial Board
MAR HICKS
Mar Hicks is an author, historian, and professor doing research on hidden histories of computing, as well as the history of labor and technology. Hicks is currently an Associate Professor at The University of Virginia's School of Data Science, in Charlottesville, teaching courses on the history of technology, computing and society, and the larger implications of powerful and widespread digital infrastructures. Their research focuses on bringing hidden technological dynamics to light, to change the core narratives of the history of computing. Hicks's multiple award-winning book, Programmed Inequality, looks at how the British lost their early lead in computing by discarding women computer workers, and what this cautionary tale tells us about current issues in high tech. Their new work looks at resistance and queerness in the history of technology. Hicks is also co-editor of the book Your Computer Is On Fire (MIT Press, 2021), a volume of essays about how we can begin to fix our broken high tech infrastructures. Other writing and more information can be found at: marhicks.com.
Letter from the Editor in Chief
It is my pleasure to introduce the Oxford Research Encyclopedia (ORE) of Science, Technology and Society. This ORE aims to serve as an integral resource for scholars and students seeking to understand how the interdisciplinary study of science and technology can open windows into the complex interplay between science, technology, and society. Researchers contributing to this ORE are part of an international network of scholars invested in understanding how data gathered and compiled through scientific investigation eventually become knowledge systems used and deployed by scientist, engineers, technologist, policy makers, and the lay public to inform decisions about how we live together as interconnected social and cultural beings.
The ORE of Science, Technology and Society endeavors to be a valuable site to sort through the challenging issues of our day, as well as those that have challenged people in the past and will challenge people in the future. As we live through a contemporary moment where artificial intelligence (AI) seems to question everything from the creative beauty of narrative storytelling to nearly all forms of human knowledge production, this ORE will be a location to find salient insights from anthropologists, computer scientists, engineers, sociologist, historians, philosophers, political scientists, and a host of others invested in multifaceted explorations of the cultural, ethical, economic, political, moral, and social dimensions of science and technology.
Driven by a desire to explore the evolution of the production of scientific knowledge and the distribution of our technological creations, the ORE of Science, Technology and Society explains the methods, theories, approaches, and case studies that reveal how and why science and technology are dominant motifs of our world. As science and technology more directly drive our economic realities–from emerging technology that allow humanity to communicate across space and time, to computationally-driven networked systems that undergird global financial markets–this ORE will provide relevant commentary that enables us to envision a more equitable world. Similarly, science and technology influence, shape, and redefine our social interactions, political institutions, and cultural values. The emergence and evolution of social media exemplifies this reality. The ORE of Science, Technology and Society charts knowledge pathways and describes how society embeds political power within science and technology, reveals the co-production of science, technology, and society, and articulates the situatedness of scientific and technological knowledge. Overall, I believe the ORE of Science, Technology and Society will help us better understand past, present, and future entanglements of science, technology, and society.
The ORE of Science, Technology and Society also leans into the power of the digital to reach a wider readership and embraces creative flexibility that enables the continual updating of articles as research reveals new insights and observations. I am excited to lead this collaborative effort to collectively share the most current knowledge about how science and technology shape how we interact, communicate, and cooperatively live with each other.
Rayvon Fouché
Editor-in-Chief
Northwestern University
