FACULTY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY | Conference
Swedish STS conference 2026: Cross-Pollinations, Contamination, Collaboration
Wednesday 10 June, 11:30 - Friday 12 June, 15:00
Niagara, Nordenskiöldsgatan 1 -
Welcome to the 20th anniversary of the Swedish STS Conference that will be held at the Niagara building in Malmö, 10–12 juni 2026. It's hosted by Malmö University in collaboration with Lund University.
Conference theme
The theme Cross-Pollinations, Contamination, Collaboration invites contributions that address pressing global challenges such as climate change, artificial intelligence, warfare, infectious diseases and migration. The conference explores how cultures, technologies and disciplines interact in ongoing processes of exchange, how contamination shapes interdependence and accessibility, and how collaborations across boundaries can foster innovation and societal change. A particular strength of the STS field is its ability to critically examine both successes and failures of science and technology across their entire life cycle – from inception to everyday use and eventual decline.
Collaboration is central to STS practice, often requiring interdisciplinarity and engagement across the traditional divide between natural sciences and the humanities. This conference will highlight how such collaborations can generate new methods, perspectives and models for engagement, while also interrogating the values that underpin them – who participates, what counts as legitimate knowledge, and how boundaries are maintained or transgressed. Without cross-pollination, contamination and collaboration with wider society, science risks losing relevance and legitimacy.
About
The Swedish STS Conference is an open, widely advertised, biennial conference, organised since 2006. It is an interdisciplinary meeting place for researchers interested in issues related to technology and science in society as approached from social science and humanities perspectives, and while it gathers researchers at all levels of their careers, it is planned and coordinated to particularly appeal to doctoral students and early career researchers, with special sessions and events catering to the concerns of junior colleagues.
