Content of the programme

The curriculum is divided into two semesters: a first general, introductory semester, and a second semester aimed at specialisation. During the first semester, you will attend a lecture-programme of 5 modules. During the second semester you will write a thesis in an area of specialisations offered by the ESST network; in most cases, this will involve moving to one of the other ESST universities in Europe.

First semester

The modules in the 1. semester will introduce the student to the field of STS. The organization of the modules differ from university to university, but generally focus on:

Introduction in Society, Science and Technology Studies
Science and technology in the making: Entering the world of the laboratory
Historical perspectives on scientific and technological change
Globalisation and regulation of science and technology
The politics of knowledge

There are approximately seven two-hour sessions per week each covering a different topic. Each session consists of a combination of a lecture, a seminar and skills training. Although the Programme involves a full-time workload, the number of contact hours is quite small, which means that you must plan your work carefully. On average, you are expected to spend about eighteen hours a week reading and preparing for the sessions.

Specialisation semester

The final semester (2nd or 4th, depending upon format of programme) is spent at one of the partner-universities of the ESST network which offers the specialisations students have selected to study their field of interest in greater depth. Students receive an introductory course in their specialisation and spent their remaining time preparing their Master thesis. For information on second semester specialisations see this page.

Introduction in Society, Science and Technology Studies (STS)

This module introduces students to different ways in which the relationship between society, technology and science have been viewed. The aim of the module is to teach students how to discern these relationships in texts and to understand their strength and weaknesses. The module examines how these relationships are portrayed in literature such as Huxley's Brave New World as well as in a range of scholarly disciplines. The module ends with views on current science and technology studies literature. Examples of issues that are disussed in this module are the environmental, economic and social impact of science and technology on society; the image of technology and the context-independent, rational image of science; several philosophical positions ( e.g. Mumford, Ellul and Winner) and sociological approaches (e.g. Social Construction of Technology, Actor-Network Theory and Large Technological System approach).

Core Literature:

Bijker, W.E., Hughes T.P.& Pinch, T., (1987) The Social Construction of Technological Systems. New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, Cambridge MA.: MIT Press.
Kuhn, T. (1977). The Historical Structure of Scientific Discovery. In: The Essential Tension, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Latour, B. (1987). Science in action: how to follow engineers and scientists through society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
MacKenzie D. and Wajcman, J. eds. (1999). The social shaping of technology Milton Keynes: Open University Press
Webster, Andrew. (1991). Science, Technology and Society: New directions. London: Macmillan Press LTD.

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Science and Technology in the Making: Entering the World of the Laboratory

The aim of this module is to illustrate the complexities involved in the processes of building up scientific facts. It takes a constructivist approach and introduces students to the way experimental research programs are set up and how they involve negotiations, translations of interests, and have political as well as cultural relevance. This constructivist image of science involves a close look at the actual way scientists work in constructing facts and artefacts. The scientific laboratory is where science is practiced. Therefore, the lectures and assignments are centered around different aspects of the laboratories, like machines, techniques, institutions, engineers, politicians, skills, information, knowledge, strategies, choices, patents, ethical conflicts, controversies, innovations, etc. At the end of the three-week period, students should have some idea of the way laboratories actually function. This includes their internal functioning, the way they fulfill various functions in modern societies, including the way they relate to other laboratories and sustain links with laboratories in industrial contexts.

Core Literature:

Collins, H.M. (1985) Changing order. Replication and induction in scientific practice. London: SAGE Publications.
Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. (1986) Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. second ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Traweek, S. (1988) Beamtimes and lifetimes. The world of high-energy physicists. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: Harvard University Press.
Galison, Peter, and Bruce Hevly, eds. (1992) Big Science: The growth of Large-Scale Research. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Interpreting the History of Science and Technology

This module builds upon the first two modules by exploring some key developments in the history of science and technology. Its aim is to deepen students' understanding and use of the range of analytical perspectives and concepts introduced in modules 1 and 2. It examines two episodes considered crucial in the making of the modern world: The Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, which established the most important features of present-day science (experiments, laboratories, mathematical and mechanistic ways of explanation). The Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which created modern industrial society (labor relations, consumer products, classes, politics). Both of these developments were deeply consequential but they were also highly complex, and historians have adopted various points of view to make sense of them. In the course of this module, students will learn about both revolutions by reviewing some of these interpretations, by scrutinizing their particularities, and by trying to assess the flaws and merits of the perspectives from which they result. Thus, students will acquire a better understanding of how science and technology came to be the way they are today, while at the same time we gain insight into the historian's business of interpreting and analyzing a job that we will eventually have to master ourselves.

Core Literature:

Bruland, K. (1982) Industrial Conflict as a Source of Technological Innovation In: Economy and Society Vol 11 p.91-121.
Mumford, L. (1934) Technics and Civilisation. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Pickstone, John V. (2000) Ways of Knowing. A new History of Science, Technology and Medicine. Manchester: Manchester University Press

Globalisation and regulation of science and technology

The aim of this module is to provide the student with an introduction to some of the key concepts and ideas about innovation that have been developed in economics and sociology. These form a set of tools which the student may subsequently use in his/her own critical analysis. It examines the implications of changing government-university-industry relations on the science-technology knowledge base. It explores the boundaries between public and private, science and technology, university and industry and how the have changed. Universities are now assuming tasks that were once largely the province of industrial firms and vice versa. Within industry, questions are raised about what should be located within the firm, between firms, or among firms, universities, and government laboratories. As universities cross traditional boundaries in developing new linkages to industry, questions arise concerning their roles as sources of independent expertise. What is more, a co-evolution between new technological developments and their cognitive and institutional environments changes the knowledge infrastructure. Questions then arise concerning how interdisciplinary science-technologies should develop at the interfaces.

Core Literature:

Freeman, C. and Perez C. (1988). Structural Crises of Adjustment. In Dosi, G. et al. eds.
Technical Change and Economic Theory. London: Pinter
Metcalfe, J.S. (1994), Evolutionary Economics and Technology Policy, Economic Journal, 104, pp. 931-41.
Nelson, R.R. and Winter, S. (1977) Search for Useful Theory of Innovation, Research Policy, 6, pp. 36-76.
Smith, K. (1991). Innovation Policy in and Evolutionary Context. In: Saviotti. P and Metcalfe, J.S. eds.
Evolutionary theories of economic and technological change: present status and future prospects. Chur: Harwood Academic Publisher

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The Politics of Knowledge

This module introduces students to issues related to the governance of knowledge. Subjects which will be dealt with in this module are the politics of science and technology; technology and democracy; risk society; the role of the government, the media and experts, and the public in the governance of knowledge; and constructive technology assessment; environmental controversies etc. In this module the politics of facts and artifacts as well as the policy of science and technology will be discussed. Much effort in technology studies have been spent on debunking this myth of technology as the apolitical benefactor of mankind. Scholars in this area now seem to agree that Ôartifacts have politics', at least in the sense that cultural progress shape technology.

Core Literature:

Nelkin D., (1995) Selling Science. How the press covers science and technology, Freeman & Comp. (rev.ed.)
Rip, Arie. & Thomas Misa, Johan Schot (eds.) (1995) Managing Technology in Society. The approach of Constructive Technology Assessment. London: PinterThomas.
Winner, L. (1986). The Whale and the Reactor. A search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Webster, Frank ((1995) Theories of the Information Society. London Routledge.

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