“It could have been different” is the quintessential anti-determinist and anti-essentialist mantra of STS. This mantra is a simultaneous reflection on being and becoming, a concern with the past, present and the future. It is a mantra that implicates a care of the possible.

The concern with future(s) is unprecedented and ranges across all scales. Climate change; financial technologies – ‘futures’ – allowing investment on presumptions; and gene tests for diagnosing (the probability) of ailments to appear later in life, are but a few evident examples. Predicting, forecasting, foresighting future(s) is an inextricable part of the present and the role of science and technology in the production as well as the anticipation of the future(s), is paramount. Arguably for the first time in centuries the future looks gloomy, rather than bright.

A concern with future(s) is central to the field of STS. When future(s) are made – not given – as suggested above, how they are made becomes a central and painstaking concern. What constitutes the practices and sociotechnical arrangements of future making? What future(s) follows from our current arrangements, infrastructures and ways of engaging? What diagnosis of the present – what nature(s) – does specific future making practices rest upon? And when future(s) are not entirely up to us and escapes us continuously, how are we disposed? The DASTS 2016 conference committee invites the Danish STS research milieu to engage with the practices of future(s) and future making.

The conference committee invites participants, paper abstracts and track proposals concerned with, but not limited to, future(s). The spirit of the conference is as always inclusive and exploratory. The conference welcomes contributions from scholars at all academic levels that consider themselves affiliated with STS to share and discuss their work. DASTS 2016 is a biennial conference of the Danish Association for Science, Technology and Society Studies.

Thursday the 2nd

Friday the 3rd