Projects

Current

      • Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, and Technoscience
        The TRU is proud to be part of the distributed editorship of Catalyst, a new online and open journal. Catalyst serves the expanding interdisciplinary field of feminist science and technology studies (STS) by supporting theoretically inventive and methodologically creative scholarship incorporating approaches from critical public health, disability studies, sci-art, technology and digital media studies, history and philosophy of science and medicine, and more.  Current lead editors are TRU members Michelle Murphy and Patrick Keilty, along with colleague Banu Subramaniam from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
      • Environmental Data Justice Lab is an Indigenous Science and Technology Studies lab concern with the relationships between data, pollution, land, and colonialism.
      • Endocrine Disruptors Action is a working group of researchers concerned with the widespread presence of endocrine disrupting chemicals in commodities, built environments, industrial emissions, ecosystems, waters, and atmospheres.  EDAction advocates for improvements to Canadian toxics governance and seeks to advance critical discussions about the regulation, science, and monitoring of endocrine disrupting chemicals.   The work of EDAction is funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant
      • Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI).
        Michelle Murphy and the TRU are founding members of EDGI, an international network that leverages research and online tools to track and respond to the undermining of evidence-based environmental governance in the United States. As a new administration arrives in Washington in January 2017, change is coming both to environmental policy and the scientific and evidence-based work that has long supported and steered it.This project brings together an international network of social and natural scientists, lawyers, and other information and environmental professionals that compose the diverse range of skills needed to document and advocate for the vital important of evidence-based environmental policy.
      • Placing Science: Implementing Feminist, Indigenous, and Decolonial Theories of Place and Land in the Laboratory. A SSHRC funded collaboration based at the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research at Memorial University of Newfoundland, directed by Max Liboiron.
      • Sexy Data is a SSHRC-funded project led by TRU member Patrick Keilty that examines the strategic choices made by technical staff within the vast and lucrative online pornography industry.
      • Technoscience Salon is an open forum for entangling intellectual and political questions about technoscience while remixing the disciplines composing Science and Technology Studies.
      • TRU Writers is a group for TRU members where we work together to turn our research into writing.

Past Projects

      • Historicizing Reproduction is an EU Marie Curie project led by Martina Schluender in collaboration with Michelle Murphy and the TRU.
      • Environmental Data Archiving was a project co-organized by TRU members Michelle Murphy, Matt Price , and Patrick Keilty to archive government environmental and climate data vulnerable to becoming less public accessible or lost in the transition to the new presidential administration.  This project was part of  EDGI and its Data Rescue work in  collaboration with the DataRefuge project at University of Pennsylvania and the Internet Archive.
      • The Politics of Evidence and Our Right to Know Collaboration
        Carla Hustak and Michelle Murphy of the TRU are working in collaboration with The Politics of Evidence Working Group, organized by Natasah Myers, on bringing greater attention the to the federal politics of knowledge making and ignorance in Canada. The TRU also has a representative on the organizing committee of the non-profit Our Right to Know, which is coordinating a national network of organizations concerned with the current politics of Canadian science and research.
      • Techniques of the Corporation was a SSHRC funded project from 2016-2018 that critically examined the corporation in the same way that historians of science and STS scholars have approached science, colonialism, and militarism as complex sites for knowledge production, value-making, and technopolitics. This project was co-led by Kira Lussier, Bretton Fosbrook, Justin  Douglas and Michelle Murphy)
      • Technoscience Salon (2014-15) – Activating Evidence
        Organized by Natasha Myers and the Metalab.
      • Technoscience Salon (2013-14) – Critical Itineraries
        In collaboration with Sebastian Gil-Riano, Shiho Satsuka, and Michelle Murphy, the project brought  insights from postcolonial studies, indigenous studies, critical race studies, and feminist and queer studies to bear on the ways we follow and tell stories about technoscience
      • Technoscience Salon (2012-13) — Ecologies
        The technoscience salon project on Ecologies was co-organized by Astrid Schrader, Michelle Murphy, Natasha Myers
      • Ecologies Collaborative Writing Project (2012-13)
        This project, organized by Astrid Schrader,  brought graduate students from York University and the University of Toronto together with TRU researchers to  collaboratively write an article that extends the insights and provocations of rethinking ecologies that were the theme of the Technoscience Salon.
      • Technoscience Salon (2008-2012) 
        The Technoscience Salon, co-organized by Natasha Myers, Michelle Murphy and others,  is an open monthly forum for interdisciplinary and playful intellectual exchange on questions of science, technology and biomedicine. The Salon is organized annually along a theme: Mix and Stir (2008-9); X meets Y (2009-10); Open Concept (2010-11); Extensions (2011-12).
      • Plant Encounters Workshop (May 2011)
        The Plant Encounters Workshop, organized by Carla Hustak,  was  animated by an inquiry into interdisciplinary approaches to encountering plants as nonhuman others that problematize our ontologies, politics, methodologies, and narrative frameworks.  Full details here.
      • Undergraduate Reading Group (2010-11)  
        MAPPING with FANON (Medicine and Politics)
        Co-organized by Brian Beaton.
      • Open Concept Graduate Reading Group (2010-11)
        Organized by Sarah Tracy and Emily Simmonds.
      • Thinking the Life Sciences Reading Group (2009-2010)
        A small bi-weekly reading group that is exploring questions of ontology, life and science. Organized by Sarah Tracy.
      • Biopolitics + Technoscience Series (2006-2007)
        An interdisciplinary roundtable and lecture series exploring the multiple and conflicting ways technology, science, and governance transform life itself.
      • RaceSci Website (1996-2006)
        The RaceSci Website was a scholarly forum and database that addressed a longstanding gap in resources for the history of race in science, medicine, and technology.