Charlotte Högberg

I'm co-chairing the Society for Social Studies of Science @4sweb.bsky.social Conference in Toronto, Oct 2026. #STS #scipol #innovation

Theme: "TechnoPower • Technoscientific Futures".

Open panel submissions portal is open! ls!

Deadline: 2nd February 2026

www.4sonline.org/about_the_co...

Markets and Mobility: How Employers Structure Economic Opportunity

Intergenerational mobility, measuring the ability to achieve economic success regardless of family background, is a critical reflection of a society’s commitment to equality of opportunity. Rising income inequality has raised concerns about the potential erosion of upward mobility. While education has traditionally been viewed as the path to mobility, its transformative power is facing challenges in a rapidly evolving job market. This project reorients the focus of intergenerational mobility research by highlighting the labor market as an arena for the reproduction of advantage. It employs a comparative approach, using administrative data from four countries: Sweden, Austria, England, and the United States. It also incorporates evidence from a broader set of nations through cross-national surveys, longitudinal household surveys, labor force surveys, secondary data, and digital trace data. The project employs cutting-edge empirical methods, including quasi- experimental designs, event studies, within-family comparisons, decomposition analyses, counterfactual simulations, and diagnostic checks to rigorously assess the extent of inequalities in the labor market. The research investigates how family background influences the sorting of individuals to employers and workplaces, accounting for education and occupation, and explores variations in career progression within and between employers. It comprehensively catalogues and assesses mechanisms shaping workplace inequality, contributing to the development of social closure theory. Additionally, the project evaluates intervention strategies, encompassing both employer practices and government actions, to promote fair opportunity in the labor market.

JOB! I'm hiring a postdoc for 2 years on my ERC MaMo project.

Looking for someone with strong quant methods, ongoing work close to the project's aims, and a desire to publish in sociology. Start flexible in the next 12 months.

Formal call out shortly, but contact me first.

CB027: Synthetic data and representation: The politics of AI generated computational practices Synthetic data are touted as fixes to technical, ethical, and political challenges. But what do they mean for the politics of representation in knowledge

Are you interested in synthetic data? Join us at the EASST conference in Kraków, 8-11 September 2026. The call for abstracts is open until end of Feb.

Hope to see you and engage with your work in Kraków!

#STS #EASST #syntheticdata

nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...

This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵

Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

Infographic with AI slop published in Nature Scientific Reports

"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se

Tom Waits!

I Set A Trap To Catch My Students Cheating With AI. The Results Were Shocking. "Students are not just undermining their ability to learn, but to someday lead."

"To my students and to anyone who might listen, I say: Don’t surrender to AI your ability to read, write and think when others once risked their lives and died for the freedom to do so."

www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...

London's giant AI artwork to be torn down The bizarre story of why a much-talked-about creation is being torn down. Plus: Docklands Light Railway extension, giant laser stalks the night sky, and more tales of Android phone theft rejection.

Just catching up with this amazing bit of London Centric reporting and this is such an excellent description of the weird epistemic ambiguity produced by AI: "There’s clearly something political about it but nobody knows what it is." www.londoncentric.media/p/ai-artwork...

EASST2026 Home The conference will take place on the main campus of AGH University of Krakow, walking distance from the Krakow’s vibrant city centre.

Call for panels now open until 31 Oct 2025. We invite you to join us for EASST’s Biennial Conference, to be held in Krakow, Poland
easst.net/conference/e...

A worker sorts through a large pile of e-waste in an industrial facility, highlighting the environmental impact of discarded electronics.

We're seeing lots of headlines about the catastrophic impact of massive data center expansion. But what else could data centers look like?

In my perpetual quest to seek out alternative technofutures, I want to highlight the really cool work of Keolu Fox.

🧵

Klart: Nu har fiskargubben fått ett namn 39 namnförslag lämnades in - det här ska gubben heta

statyn skulle driva runt i en båt i älven i Lycksele, intill fiskargubben www.vk.se/2022-05-10/n...

One could also really question if it
is knowledge and if it is for free

What exactly is meant by formatting here? Because a lot of the time it is just journals requiring difference reference styles, which could be easily adjusted in no time if you just use an old-fashioned reference managing system or similar coded referencing.

Page from March 1997 Scientific American featuring Brewster Kahle’s article 'Preserving the Internet.' Text describes the Internet Archive’s mission to save digital information. Includes a photo of a Smithsonian exhibit with 1996 U.S. election web memorabilia.

In 1996, Brewster Kahle wrote "Preserving the Internet" for Scientific American. Nearly 30 years later, it’s striking how many of his predictions about digital preservation came true—and how many challenges remain.

Let’s compare 1996 vs 2025 🧵

Happy nerd unboxing!

Verkligen! Plus att uppmärksamma att mer resurser och erkännande av bibliotekens roll behövs borde väl verkligen ligga i chefernas intresse.

Har också häpnat över den där diskussionen och hur det misstolkats till att handla om klagande bibliotekarier. Problemet är väl att biblioteken kommit att få ett brett uppdrag för att andra instanser stängt, utan att få ett officiellt breddat uppdrag eller att resurser följt med, vilket är bananas!

Contributor: I'm an intersex professor. Am I supposed to lie by teaching 'only male and female'? A campaign against teachers who acknowledge realities of human biology forces a choice: Teach truth and risk your job, or lie and maybe keep it.

“Should I pretend I, as an intersex person, don’t exist?” - Georgiann Davis www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

When you re-read a submitted manuscript and finds that you have accidentally written 'the shit towards' instead of 'shift towards'... #academiclife

The Handmaid's Toyota

Samhället sviker – då står bibliotekarien kvar ANNA ANDERSSON: Folk har ingen annanstans att vända sig

biblioteken får fylla igen revorna i samhällsväven

Struggles when being in academia: The constant battle in your (or maybe it is just my) mind about whether to do the very necessary admin stuff or to read Simondon in the sun when one unscheduled hour approaches. #STS #academia

Statssekreterare tex.
Annars kanske mest administratör eller assistent nu för tiden?

A paperback copy of the book Ways of being by James Bridle.

The most inspiring read of my summer. James Bridle’s Ways of Being is a beautiful and thought-provoking essay on the entanglement of humans, nature and technologies, and ideas about what intelligence is and how to build ”smart” machines.

#STS #AI

Unsustainable artificial intelligence and algorithmically facilitated emissions: The case for emissions-reduction-by-design - Jutta Haider, Malte Rödl, James White, 2025 This commentary discusses the role of increasingly artificial intelligence-infused big tech platforms in facilitating and normalising high-emission lifestyles a...

We need to start calling out big tech for their algorithmically faciltated emissions and their climate collapse by design default. Read our comment in Big Data & Society @bigdatasoc.bsky.social doi.org/10.1177/2053...

Thank you very much for pointing me in the direction of your work. Certainly seems like what I was looking for!

Tack för tipset! Ja, väldigt intressant på temat!

Hi #STS peers and other ethnographers!
I am looking for good work on ethics of ethnographic research. In general but also particularly in healthcare/medical settings. Do you have any suggestions? Please, let me know! #STS #ethnography #research #researchethics

So sad, Callon was such an important figure in STS. Who can forget those scallops? I met him once at the École des Mines, Bruno Latour introduced us, around 1990 - that was it. I wish I'd gotten to know him, too late now - yet the scallops and ANT live on
#STS @4sweb.bsky.social @aussts.bsky.social