Sifting and Winnowing Science and Technology Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: The Holtz Center turns 25
Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies 25th Anniversary Symposium
April 30 and May 1, 2026
Pyle Center
Registration is required. Zoom option is available. Please register for the symposium by April 15 at the following link.
The Center’s 25th anniversary provides a timely opportunity to reflect on the vocabularies and frameworks that can be used to make sense of the current and future social contract of science, technology, higher education and the state more broadly. The symposium will open space for dialogue and debate regarding recent policy and political shifts, and showcase the heterogeneity of perspectives about what STS thinking can bring to science and technology research and development across campus and beyond.
As the University of Wisconsin-Madison responds to shifts that impact scientific knowledge and technological innovation on campus, the symposium provides an apt moment to reimagine the role of STS research and education. By accounting for the specificities of Wisconsin political history and political culture, we endeavor for the symposium to explore how STS at UW-Madison can meaningfully make sense of shifting relationships between science and democracy as well as science and “the public good.”
The symposium also offers an occasion to reflect on how individuals and intellectual currents at UW-Madison have grappled with various issues related to science-society dynamics in the past, including decades before the formal establishment of the Holtz Center. In the past 175 years and especially during the early and mid-20th century, a unique history of knowledge production unfolded in specific parts of UW-Madison that can today be labeled as “proto-STS” or STS-adjacent. Various aspects of thinking and research on campus have at different moments reckoned with the complex relationship between science and society, including in relation to knowledge produced at the university itself. More notably, they have had significant impact not only on public discourses on the role of intellectuals and expert knowledge in democratic society, but also in the formulation of institutional arrangements between universities and state agencies here in Wisconsin and beyond.
Above all, the symposium seeks to highlight the power of STS thinking in providing unique analytical depth regarding the challenges facing higher education as well as science and technology more broadly at the contemporary conjuncture while simultaneously making sense of how this conjuncture itself will affect the future of STS research and education in the UW System and beyond.
April 30, 2026
4:00-5:00 PM
Opening remarks and kick-off panel: The Wisconsin Idea as a STS Concept, The Longer History of STS at UW-Madison
Panelists: Nicole Nelson (Associate Professor of Medical History and Bioethics), Zhe Yu Lee (PhD Candidate in Geography)
This session will explore ways in which to conceive of the longer history of STS research at UW-Madison. It will suggest that the conceptualization of the Wisconsin Idea during the late 19th century had STS valences, given that it emerged out ideologically charged but institutionally productive debates regarding the relationship between knowledge production at the University of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin State Legislature, the general public and dominant political and economic interests of the time. It will also reflect on the significance of the agricultural identity of this land-grant university and identify the political and intellectual prominence of various Wisconsin schools of thought in explicitly grappling with the role of expert knowledge in providing direction and responding to the dislocations of 20th century agricultural and industrial capitalism.
In this context, it will suggest that ideological forces that contributed to the shifts from the New Deal university to the Cold War university produced a number of epistemological contradictions and conundrums that continue to have complex legacies into the present moment. Doing so allows for a critical and reflexive understanding on how the Wisconsin Idea and its iterations and interpretations over time grappled with and contributed to debates about 20th century democracy and technocracy.
By briefly exploring how specific individuals affiliated with UW-Madison used “STS” ideas to impact public, political and policy debates throughout the university’s history, the discussion will suggest that lessons that derive from experiences right here on campus can be learned for the present moment as a markedly intense reconfiguration of institutions that underpin scientific knowledge and technological innovation continues to unfold.
5:00-6:30 PM
Reception and Awards Ceremony
May 1, 2026
9:00-10:15 AM
Panel 2: Reflections on the History of Holtz Center
Panelists: Eric Schatzberg (Professor of History and Sociology, Georgia Tech University; former Holtz Center Director), Daniel Kleinman (Professor of Sociology, Boston University; former Holtz Center Director), Noah Weeth Feinstein (Professor of Curriculum and Instruction; former Holtz Center Director), Samer Alatout (Associate Professor of Community and Environmental Sociology, former Holtz Center Director), Sarah Pfatteicher (Executive Director, Five Colleges, Inc; founding member of the Holtz Center Board)
Facilitator: Jenell Johnson (Professor of Communication Arts and current Holtz Center Director)
This panel will explore the broader context (understood expansively) that shaped the development and evolution of the Holtz Center. Panelists will reflect on their experiences engaging with, directing, and facilitating the Center over the years, sharing insights from different moments in its history. Time will also be set aside for discussion with audience members, many of whom have been involved with the Center’s research, teaching, and programming.
10:30-11:45 AM
Panel 3: Perspectives on Science, Technology and Research Policy
Panelists: Michael Bernard-Donals (Professor of English and Jewish Studies), Jason Delborne (Associate Professor of Public Affairs), Mikhaila Calice (Public Service Commission of Wisconsin), Maddy Kroot (Assistant Professor of Geography)
Facilitator: Michael Xenos (Professor of Life Sciences Communication)
This panel brings together a diverse group of speakers whose work shapes and is shaped by the contemporary science–technology–policy landscape. Rather than treating policy as external to academic life, the panel foregrounds how policies around funding, accountability, governance, and evaluation actively structure conditions of research, teaching, and shared governance within the university. The discussion may also examine the evolving role of the state in scientific knowledge production and application, and/or reflect on the shifting politics and political economy of higher education, with particular attention to how faculty, administrators, and institutions negotiate autonomy, responsibility, and public purpose in the present moment.
12:00-1:30 PM
Lunch Plenary address by Banu Subramaniam
“Migrant Ecologies: Plant Worlds and the Afterlives of Empire”
How have histories of colonialism and their foundational language of gender, race, sexuality, and nation shaped the language, terminology, and theories of the modern plant sciences? How and why do botanical theories remain grounded in the violence of their colonial pasts? In wrestling with these difficult origins, I develop the concept of migrant ecologies to retheorize plant migration and reproductive biology. I explore new biological frameworks that harness the power of feminist thought in order to reimagine and reinvigorate our love of plants.
2:00-3:15 PM
Panel 4: Perspectives on STS and Education
Panelists: Daniel Williford (Assistant Professor of History), Sainath Suryanarayanan (Holtz Center Associate Director), Lyn MacGregor (Academic Advisor & Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Sociology), Krishanu Saha (Professor of Biomedical Engineering), Sam Evans (PhD Student in Curriculum and Education)
Facilitator: Chris Kirchgasler (Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction)
This panel brings together individuals from across campus to reflect on the current state of STS teaching at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and to consider how curricular approaches might respond to the evolving relationship between science and society. The discussion may also engage broader challenges facing higher education, including shifting trends in STEM education and changing public debates about the value and career relevance of a college degree. Panelists may reflect on the scope, purpose, and usefulness of STS education as shaped by different disciplinary locations and professional roles, and may consider how strategic research directions across UW–Madison (e.g. RISE initiatives and the expansion of School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences) might be leveraged to enhance STS course offerings and other education-oriented programming. These reflections could open space for thinking about how students engage critically with the broader contexts of knowledge production in which they themselves participate.
3:30-4:45 PM
Panel 5: The Future of STS at Wisconsin and Beyond
Panelists: Nan Kim (Associate Professor of History and Anthropology, UW-Milwaukee), Melina Packer (Assistant Professor of Race, Gender and Sexuality Studies, UW-La Crosse), Samer Alatout (Associate Professor of Community and Environmental Sociology), Aida Arosoaie (PhD Candidate in Anthropology), Raymond Allen (Postdoctoral Fellow in Limnology)
Facilitator: Katarzyna Beilin (Professor of Spanish and Portuguese)
This panel brings together scholars from across the University of Wisconsin system, representing different campuses, disciplinary locations, and stages of academic and professional life. Panelists may draw on their varied experiences of research, teaching, and institutional engagement to reflect on the present and possible futures of science and technology studies in a changing social, political, and institutional landscape. Rather than advancing a single account or agenda, the panel creates space for multiple perspectives on how STS research and education might take shape going forward. Attention may be given to how STS work is practiced across different institutional settings within the UW System, as well as to how these differences open distinct possibilities, challenges, and aspirations for the future of STS at Wisconsin and beyond.
4:45-5:00 PM
Closing remarks
Symposium Program at a Glance
- Opening remarks and panel followed by reception on April 30, 4:00-6:30 PM
- Lunch keynote by Prof. Banu Subramaniam on May 1, Noon-1:30 PM
- Panels on the pasts, presents and futures of STS on May 1, 9 AM-5 PM
For questions about the symposium, please contact Zhe Yu Lee. Email: zlee27@wisc.edu