ADDRESSING REAL WORLD QUESTIONS
The community of scholars at MIT’s Program on Science, Technology and Society bring methods from the humanities and social sciences to understanding science, technology, and medicine around the world. Our department includes lively undergraduate and graduate programs, and postgraduate training for science and technology journalists.
For undergraduates, STS courses provide vital perspective on the human factors shaping the development and application of scientific, technical, and medical knowledge and innovation. While STS does not offer an independent major, we offer students the option to concentrate or minor in STS, to join STS to any science or engineering major as a joint major, and to double major in STS and a science or engineering discipline.
For graduate students, STS partners with colleagues in History and Anthropology to train the next generation of researchers to ask and answer important questions about historical, cultural, social, political and economic dimensions of science, technology and medicine across the globe. HASTS, our collaborative doctoral program, is among MIT’s most competitive. Graduates hold tenured and tenure track positions at institutions including Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Kings College London, National University of Singapore and pursue careers in law, business, journalism, and museum work.
STS also administers the Knight Science Journalism Program, which brings science and technology journalists to campus for postgraduate education in science, technology, and STS. Directed by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Deborah Blum, alums of the program can be found at publications and broadcast outlets around the world including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Time, Scientific American, Science, the Associated Press, ABC News, CNN, LeMonde, El Pais, Der Spiegel, BBC, Times of London, and Sydney Morning Herald.
Diversity and inclusion are central to the STS curriculum at all levels. Our subjects examine how the people who practice science, engineering and medicine influence the knowledge and innovations produced. And they remind us that knowledge and innovation have differential implications depending on the historical, cultural, social, political and economic contexts in which they are used.
By bridging humanities, social sciences, science, technology, and medicine, our department seeks to build relationships among colleagues across the Institute in a shared effort to understand the human challenges at the core of the MIT mission.