A Brief History of the STS Futures Lab Timeline

This infographic presents a high level timeline showing key events in the development of the STS Futures Lab.

The STS Futures Lab started in the summer of 2017 as a collaboration between co-directors Emily York and Shannon Conley and two Integrated Science and Technology (ISAT) students working on a senior capstone project on autonomous vehicles. Drawing on our academic training in the field of STS, and our backgrounds in Communication and Political Science, we engage ISAT students in considering the social, ethical, legal, and political contexts of science and technology, and to reflect on what it means to be a “responsible innovator” today and in the future. Following the initial collaboration with these capstone students, which resulted in two presentations at STS conferences and in-progress publications, we secured physical space for a laboratory and recruited the first full cohort of twelve students for the 2018-2019 academic year. Participating in the STS Futures Lab requires students to participate in weekly lab meetings; conduct independent research on a topic related to science, technology, and society; and collaborate with us on the Co-Imagining Futures research project as participants and facilitators.