[INES Announce] AAA 2026 INES Panel CfP

[Sarah Appelhans]

Good morning INES members!

It is time to submit for the AAA conference! This year it will be in St.
Louis from Nov 18 - 22. We are a little late getting our INES panel
together, but if you are interested in submitting, please let us know ASAP.
We are planning an Oral Presentation of 4-6 papers this year, along with a
brief INES meetup after our panel to connect with our members.

The AAA deadline is Wed, April 29 - if you can get us an *abstract (300
words) by Apr 28*, that would be wonderful. Please send it to Sarah
Appelhans (appelhas at lafayette.edu).


*Panel Title: *Shifting Techno-Political Futures: Capturing Change amongst
Engineers and Technical Workers

Anthropologists have long documented the* human* aspects of technological
production and innovation and the roles that engineers and other technical
workers play in their organizations and in society more broadly. Engineers
frequently serve as mediators between humans and the environment (Reddy
2023; Vaughn 2022), pragmatically navigate ethical boundaries in
corporations (Smith 2021; Carrigan 2024; Dorschel 2025), and spread both
technological and political agendas domestically and abroad (Beatty and
Solares 2025). The current moment represents a crucial fork in the road,
which may either affirm the recent trajectory toward greater inclusion,
interdisciplinarity and complexity in engineering, or set the field on a
different path. A rightward political shift in the tech industry, a
collapse of funding for inclusive STEM and sustainability, and the wild
card of Generative AI have the potential to create rapid and unpredictable
cultural change. As critical actors in the creation of new techno-political
futures, engineers’ actions over the coming years will have outsized impact
in shaping the global economy.

A persistent challenge in anthropology has been capturing the process of
change as it is taking place. Ethnographic work typically describes
snapshots in time; only when viewed in increments do these cultural shifts
become visible. This is particularly challenging for those of us studying
engineering and technical industries, since the pace of technological
change is occurring so rapidly. In this call for papers, we seek
anthropologists engaged in documenting change amongst engineers and
technical workers. What types of cultural shifts are we noticing amongst
our interlocutors? How do we reveal the motion around us, even as we
attempt to capture the present moment? What innovative methodological
and/or rhetorical strategies can support our fieldwork during this time?

*References*

Beatty, Edward, and Israel G. Solares, eds. 2025. *An Engineered World: The
Role of Engineers in Global Modernity*. Engineering Studies. The MIT Press.

Carrigan, Coleen. 2024. *Cracking the Bro Code*. MIT Press.
https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5759/Cracking-the-Bro-Code.

Dorschel, Robert. 2025. *The Social Codes of Tech Workers: Class Identity
in Digital Capitalism*. Labor and Technology. MIT Press.
https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15180.001.0001.

Reddy, Elizabeth. 2023. *¡Alerta!: Engineerig on Shaky Ground*. MIT Press.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545518/alerta/.

Smith, Jessica M. 2021. *Extracting Accountability: Engineers and Corporate
Social Responsibility*. Engineering Studies, edited by Gary Lee Downey and
Matthew Wisnioski. MIT Press.

Vaughn, Sarah E. 2022. *Engineering Vulnerability: In Pursuit of Climate
Adaptation*. Duke University Press.

-- 
Best,
Sarah

Sarah E. Appelhans
Assistant Professor
Department of Engineering Studies
Lafayette College
Office: AEC 316
(610)330-5442
appelhas at lafayette.edu
Pronouns: she/her/hers
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