The Australasian Science and Technology Studies conference will be held in Wellington in November — the first time it has come to Aotearoa. This year’s theme is ‘Antipodean Interruptions’. Submissions are now invited for presentations, written workshop papers, meet-ups, and Making and Doing sessions. Please submit proposals via this form.
The CFP will be open until Friday 3 April (11:59pm NZST).
9-11 November 2026
Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington
Antipodean Interruptions
The antipodean is both relational provocation and critical departure. Perpetually defined against metropolitan poles of theory-making and hegemony, here the antipodes are re-centred as a site for questioning dominant positionalities, cartographies, and categories. What critical resources can an STS from this sea of islands (Hau’ofa 1994) mobilise, and what interruptions might it make possible? An abiding concern in STS, interruptions materialise variously as infrastructural failures, lively disturbances, activist interventions, and noise within signal. Taken as an epistemic stance, interruption does not stand outside to critique or observe, nor does it seek to overthrow or abandon. Interruptions break the tide and flow, inserting other rhythms and movements, enabling new routes to be charted, and making audible what has been silenced. Following Teresia Teaiwa (2014), we invite contributors to critically appraise and recompose their intellectual genealogies, thinking about the thinking that is rooted, but by no means stuck, ‘here’. Bringing together the anti and the inter, AusSTS 2026 encourages voices and perspectives emerging from and in conversation with Australasia, Oceania, and neighbours, questioning how STS might enact its own antipodean interruptions.
For more information about the conference and a fuller description of the theme please check out the AusSTS website. Details of plenaries and field trips will be released in coming weeks – stay tuned!