Recent News

On Friday, May 8, from 11:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in MCB 102, STPL will host a half-day workshop, marking the culmination of the first year of work for the collaborative research project The City on Life Support: Los Angeles as a Laboratory for Planetary Health. “Thinking in the Aftermath,” like the project itself, will bring scientists, technicians, artists, and activists into dialogue scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Oriented to themes of residue and remediation, particularly in the wake of the 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires, presenters will discuss current projects and future directions for scholarship and practice. Along with a panel consisting of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, keynote speakers include Joanne Nucho, Associate Professor of Anthropology at USC; Sunny Mills, an Altadena-based visual artist; and Nicole Maccalla of Eaton Fire Residents United. Lunch will be served.

If you are interested, please RSVP by e-mail to James Bradley, Postdoctoral Researcher with STPL, at jamesb20@usc.edu.

STPL is thrilled to announce the recipients of this year’s Graduate Research Stipends. These grants support summer research by current Ph.D. students working on topics related to science and technology studies — especially, but not only, those currently enrolled in the Graduate Certificate Program in STS. All funded students will present on their research in STPL’s annual graduate symposium, held early in the fall term. Watch this space for details on the event.

The students are:

Elaina Foley (History)
Bena Habtamu (Anthropology)
Alfonso Hegde (Communication)
Muyao Jiang (Communication)
Andrea Kim (Cinema and Media Studies)
Stella Lin (Communication)
Christina Marsh (American Studies and Ethnicity)
Bouchra Tafrata (Anthropology)
Denise Toor (Communication)
Sui Wang (Communication)
Ruohan Zhou (History)

Congratulations to all! We wish you a productive and fascinating summer of work.

An interdisciplinary group convened by STPL around themes of simulation and futurity recently conducted visits to USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies in Playa Vista and RAND in Santa Monica. On February 27 at ICT, the group met with a series of researchers developing new methods for the study of human psychology, artificial intelligence, terrain visualization, and their application to military contexts. One April 10 at RAND, they participated in a seminar-style conversation with researchers advancing work on Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty and Systems Transitions, drawing in researchers from RAND’s offices in Boston, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., as well as Santa Monica.

This ongoing project joins humanists and social scientists, whose work reflects critically on how simulations generate provisional knowledge about the future, with a set of practitioners of simulation. Participants represent fields including communication, sociology, anthropology, history, architecture, urban planning, and cinema, Next year, the group plans to develop research in and on sites where simulation techniques are being developed — in climate futures, biotechnology, world-building, and other domains. If you are interested in getting involved, please write to Peter Ekman, STPL’s Coordinator of Programs, at pekman@usc.edu for more information.

On Friday, January 30, from 12 to 1:30 p.m., the research team for The City on Life Support: Los Angeles as a Laboratory for Planetary Health will hear a presentation by Sam Silva, Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Population and Public Health Sciences. Silva will discuss his research on air quality and atmospheric chemistry, including his work on measuring toxic residues in the aftermath of the 2025 Eaton Fire. This event continues a series of presentations and site visits that are taking place over the course of the academic year featuring faculty from numerous component schools of USC. Each talk brings scientists and practitioners into dialogue with humanistic social scientists to explore objects of shared concern.

If you are interested in taking part — or in getting involved with “The City on Life Support” more broadly — please write to James Bradley, Postdoctoral Researcher with STPL, at jamesb20@usc.edu for more information.

During the spring semester, STPL is convening a group of USC faculty around the theme of “Simulation as a Technology of Knowledge Production.” It will join humanists and social scientists, whose work reflects critically on how simulations generate provisional knowledge about the future, with a set of practitioners of simulation. Activities will include a series of visits to sites where simulation techniques are being developed — in climate futures, biotechnology, world-building, and other domains.

The project emerges from a set of empirical and conceptual questions: We are faced with myriad societal challenges that require anticipating an uncertain future. Technical experts and policymakers rely in part on simulations and models to help plan in the face of such uncertainty. But exactly how do simulations and model-making techniques perform this work of anticipation in fields ranging from urban planning to resource management to private-sector consulting? What epistemic assumptions are built into these tools of simulation? How do the designers of simulations make decisions about the ways their anticipated futures will unfold? And how, in turn, do strategic actors draw on simulations in defining the course of future action? This project will critically address the social and political implications of such technical practices of future-making.

If you are interested in getting involved with this project, please write to Peter Ekman, STPL’s Coordinator of Programs, at pekman@usc.edu for more information.

Christina Dunbar-Hester, Professor of Communication, published an article titled “Pin the Tail on the Researcher: From Distributed to Meshy Accountability in Decentralized Social Media” in the Journal of Community Informatics.

Tara McPherson, Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, has received three additional years of grant funding for the Reclaim Project, a student-centered research initiative concerning stereotypes of masculinity and the role of progressive media. It is part of the larger Data Fluencies project based at Simon Fraser University. Previous work from the project has been featured in film festivals and gallery exhibitions.

Mike Ananny, Associate Professor Communication and Journalism, published an article titled “AI Governance as Scale Work: Synthetic Journalism Across Scalar Collisions” in Information, Communication & Society. With Matt Pearce of Rebuild Local News, he published “How We’re Using AI,” a Columbia Journalism Review edited collection of leading journalists, technologists, publishers, and policymakers reflecting on their relationships to Generative Artificial Intelligence. During the spring semester, Ananny is the Orion Visiting Scholar in the Arts in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Victoria, Canada.

Andrew Lakoff, STPL’s Director and Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, published an essay titled “A Regulatory State of Exception,” on the politics of vaccine approval during the Covid-19 pandemic, in the collection An Anthropology of Global Immunization: Vaccine Politics and Realities in Ethnographic Perspective (Berghahn, 2026), edited by Rebecca Irons, Sahra Gibbon, Joanna Cook, and Aaron Parkhurst.

On Friday, December 5, at noon, the research team for The City on Life Support: Los Angeles as a Laboratory for Planetary Health will hear a presentation from Shohreh Farzan, Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine. Farzan will discuss her ongoing inquiries into the role of environmental exposures such as air pollution in altering preclinical indicators of cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk, particularly during vulnerable lifestages such as childhood and pregnancy. As above, those with an interest in the event and project should write to James Bradley at jamesb20@usc.edu for more information.

The Graduate Certificate Program in Science and Technology Studies is pleased to issue a call for applications from any Ph.D. students working on STS-related topics. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis at this link.

The program offers an interdisciplinary doctoral certificate that helps students to draw on the rich sources of inquiry that contribute to the field of STS. The certificate provides training in the core theories and methods used to analyze the forms of political, epistemological, and cultural authority that underpin scientific knowledge and technological systems, which students can then apply in their own research.

The graduate certificate is open to Ph.D. students in any USC program. In addition to the completion of course requirements, students must demonstrate a focus on STS as a meaningful component of their doctoral dissertation. This will include working with faculty with expertise in STS on the doctoral committee.

Any questions can be directed to Cristina Mejia Visperas at mejiavis@usc.edu.

On Friday, October 24, at noon, the research team for The City on Life Support: Los Angeles as a Laboratory for Planetary Health will hear a presentation from Josh West, Professor of Earth Sciences and Environmental Studies at USC Dornsife, and members of the project team for CLEAN (Contaminant Level Evaluation and Analysis for Neighborhoods). CLEAN is a free, rapid-response service — in collaboration with the Keck School of Medicine — provided to residents of Los Angeles County in the aftermath of the January 2025 wildfires to assess the level of lead contamination in their soil. The presentation continues a series taking place over the course of the fall semester featuring faculty from numerous component schools of USC. Each talk will bring scientists and practitioners into dialogue with humanistic social scientists to explore objects of shared concern.

If you are interested in taking part in this conversation — and getting involved with “The City on Life Support” project over the next year — please write to James Bradley, Postdoctoral Researcher with STPL, at jamesb20@usc.edu for more information.

On Friday, October 31, at noon, The City on Life Support: Los Angeles as a Laboratory for Planetary Health series continues with a presentation from Jiachen Zhang, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Population and Public Health Services, and Spatial Sciences, based primarily in USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering. The talk will concern ongoing work with her ACE Research Group, which studies the nexus of air pollution, climate, and equity.

As above, those interested should write to James Bradley at jamesb20@usc.edu for more information.

STPL is pleased to be co-sponsoring a public lecture by Susan Zieger, Professor of English at UC Riverside, titled “Criminal Supply Chains and Logistical Power,” in conjunction with the USC Society of Fellows, the Van Hunnick History Department, the Department of Anthropology, and the Levan Institute for the Humanities. The talk relates to Zieger’s recent book, Logistics and Power: Supply Chains from Slavery to Space (UC Press, 2025). The talk takes place on Tuesday, November 4, at noon in Taper Hall (THH) 309K.

RSVP is required by October 30 at this link.

On Friday, October 3, at noon, the research team for The City on Life Support: Los Angeles as a Laboratory for Planetary Health will hear a presentation from Kelly Sanders, Associate Professor in the Viterbi School of Engineering. Sanders has been conducting research on air conditioning and its impacts on heat vulnerability in conjunction with her Sustainable Systems Group. Her presentation is the first in a series that will take place over the course of the fall semester featuring faculty from numerous component schools of USC. Each talk will bring scientists and practitioners into dialogue with humanistic social scientists to explore objects of shared concern.

If you are interested in taking part in this conversation — and getting involved with “The City on Life Support” project over the next year — please write to James Bradley, Postdoctoral Researcher with STPL, at jamesb20@usc.edu for more information.

We extend our thanks to everyone who attended or otherwise contributed to the annual STS Graduate Research Symposium on Friday, September 19. The four panels — “Managing Nature,” “Techno-Visualities,” “Bio/Necropolitics,” and “Techno-Imaginaries” — sparked vibrant discussion and showcased an enormous range of dissertation projects in progress.

We are again grateful to Dornsife College and to the Annenberg School for their support of STS summer research stipends for Ph.D. students.

Peter Ekman, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture and STPL’s Coordinator of Programs, will speak on his recent book, Timing the Future Metropolis: Foresight, Knowledge, and Doubt in America’s Postwar Urbanism (Cornell UP, 2024), as part of a virtual panel, “Architecture, Infrastructure, and Regional Planning,” featuring the authors of three books and hosted by the Society for American City and Regional Planning History. The panel takes place on Wednesday, October 15, at 10:00 a.m. Pacific. Details, including registration and Zoom link, are available here.

Ciruce Movahedi-Lankarani, Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies and Environmental Studies, published an article in Iranian Studies titled “A Firm Policy Decision: Infrastructural Form and Pahlavi Developmentalism at the Ahvāz Pipe Mill.”

Luísa Reis-Castro, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, published an article in Engaging Science, Technology, and Society titled “Can the Mosquito Bite? The Multispecies Transmutation of Wolbachia Mosquitoes as Biotechnologies of Epidemic Control in Rio de Janeiro.”

Kate Crawford, Research Professor of Communication, recently won the Silver Lion award at the Venice Architecture Biennale for her installation Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power since 1500 (with Vladan Joler). The installation illustrates five centuries of entangled systems of empire, technology, and control, and took shape over five years as part of the Knowing Machines Project, in consultation with USC faculty and students including Mike Ananny, Sarah Ciston, Francis Corry, Edward Kang, Will Orr, and Hamsini Sridharan. Read about the project and award here.