From 16 to 19 July, the EASST-4S 2024 Conference took place in Amsterdam, Netherlands. CzechGlobe’s Abhigya and Tereza Prasilova had the opportunity to present their work on two ongoing projects: FoSTA-Health and the SSH Centre project.
The EASST-4S 2024 conference was a joint meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). This year’s conference, themed “Making and Doing Transformations”, focused on exploring the role of Science and Technology Studies (STS) in addressing significant societal challenges.
Abhigya, a postdoctoral fellow working on the FoSTA Health project, presented a paper titled “The Politics of Postulates: Unpacking the Normative Choices in Modelling of Food System Futures”, co-authored with Professor Julia Leventon from Czech Globe and Professor Stephen Whitfield from the University of Leeds. The paper looks at an Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) that provides evidence to shape policies towards climate-smart nutrition security by modelling emissions, climate extremes, and trade and nutrition analysis. The modelling framework promises to fill the lacunae in food systems assessments that rely overtly on mathematical models and are divorced from regional particularities. It combines models with in-country knowledge and “expert” academic judgement from four countries in Southern Africa. The paper looks into how the engagements between the modellers and stakeholders shape the normative choices, such as defining key drivers of food systems transformations and future scenarios of systems change. It considers how the use of the model shapes the participatory process and vice versa and explores how policy agendas such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals influence these normative choices.
Tereza Prasilova, a PhD student working on the SSH Centre project, delivered a presentation titled “Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research for Societal Transformations: Identifying and Overcoming Barriers in Project-Based Research” as a part of the “STS for Societal Transformations: Cross-Disciplinary Visions and Realities” panel. The paper, co-authored with Professor Julia Leventon, focuses on identifying the barriers that hinder effective collaboration in project-based interdisciplinary research. The ongoing research, conducted as part of this Horizon Europe-funded project, includes interviews with researchers from the collaborative interdisciplinary teams working within the project. Tereza primarily shared the findings on key challenges in interdisciplinary collaborations, including those related to research logic, but she also talked about practical barriers for interdisciplinarity, encompassing time constraints, organisational barriers, communication issues, etc. This highlights the need for systemic changes in structuring research to better facilitate successful interdisciplinary collaboration.
Attending the conference and presenting our work was a valuable experience, providing us the opportunity to engage with a diverse community of researchers and gain feedback on our ongoing projects.
Co-author: Abhigya
SustainableCZ 
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