About

Welcome to the Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life. STPL serves as a platform for collaborative research, graduate training, and public engagement on problems at the intersection of science, technology, environment, and society.

STPL’s collaborative research projects bring together USC faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows to investigate how authorized knowledge is produced in contested settings. Its recent project, “Precarious Ecologies,” funded by the Mellon Foundation, focused on how activists and scientists collaborate to generate knowledge about environmental hazards. STPL’s current project, “The City on Life Support,” considers Los Angeles as a laboratory for the production of knowledge about planetary health.

The Center also takes an active role in training graduate students across USC’s schools. Its Graduate Certificate Program in Science and Technology Studies enables Ph.D. students to forge connections between their home departments and the interdisciplinary field of STS. Through summer research stipends and an annual graduate-student symposium, the Center provides students with a venue for conducting and sharing original research.

Finally, through its public-engagement activities, STPL seeks to foster intellectual exchange both within and beyond USC. The Center hosts public lectures, small seminars, workshops, and thematic working groups with the aim of generating insight into historical and contemporary formations of expert knowledge.

We welcome inquiries from students and potential collaborators.