The Mediating Science & Technology (MST) Signature Area is composed of scholars researching the diverse ways science and technology have inspired acceptance and resistance in the arts, mass media, material culture, and in moral, political, and social practices, past and present.
Because of their social implications, novel science and technological developments have always been controversial. But the ways these are debated, governed, and resisted have changed. Older systems of institutionally governed peer review is increasingly being undermined, sidelined, or replaced by new forms of public debate using mass media. Charges of ‘Fake News’ abound. Scientific and technological expertise is being challenged as never before.
Internationally recognized scholars from across the Faculty of Arts are tackling these developments from a range of perspectives; exploring their historical genesis, social dynamics, the media ecologies in which they thrive, and the challenges they present traditional ways of understanding expertise and the risk and potential they provide for overcoming longstanding inequalities in social power, marginalization, and oppression.
Over 100 researchers from across all seventeen departments of the Faculty of Arts are actively engaged in this Signature Research Area, independently and as part of multicenter collaborative projects. You can explore their work through our Researchers Directory or through the six thematic research clusters highlighted on the website: Arts & Media, Challenging Authority, Diverse Epistemologies, Environment, Health, and Social Frameworks.
The Science, Technology, and Society Program: MST faculty contribute to The Science, Technology, and Society Program; an interdisciplinary Arts undergraduate degree program that combines insights from Anthropology, Art and Design, Economics, English and Film Studies, History, Sociology, and Philosophy. For more information about this program, visit: https://www.ualberta.ca/interdisciplinary-studies/science-technology-and-society.