We call on Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars advocating for remote access and financial fair play to sign this petition.

The petition demands

1. STS councils, boards and conference committees, and event organizers of the international and local STS associations around the globe provide remote access to ensure hybrid participation becomes a standard practice in our research community.

2. organizers of STS conferences make the budget and costs of all future STS conferences and their respective associations transparent.

Important: The petition will be published as a letter with signatures and sent to STS councils, boards and conference committees.

Why is this petition important and why do we need your support?

As scholars committed to intersectional justice, we call STS researchers across the globe to sign this petition to demand all STS conferences and meetings to be hybrid by default. Event organizers in STS should ensure remote access becomes the standard practice attending our meetings and conferences. Further, they should provide financial transparency concerning the budgets and spendings of the representative associations concerning the realization of their conferences and events.

In exchange with this year's 4S conference organizers, we highly valued the decision and openness of the organizing team to host 4S Seattle 2025 as a hybrid event in order to enable global and collective participation. We hope more event organizers will consider and plan for hybrid participation and make data public about how financial resources are used, and conference fees calculated accordingly.

Why should you support this petition?

1. Environmental care: due to the ongoing climate crisis and contamination deriving from flying oversees, it is concerning that STS scholars should be forced to travel by plane to participate in scholarly debates and conferences. While established scholars may have the freedom to skip conferences, early career scholars may not enjoy such flexibility. As such, enabling remote access can help scholars choose how they wish to participate and do so with respect to their environmental commitments.
2. Solidarity with Indigenous communities: In recent years, we have encountered conferences taking place in endangered and colonized areas such as Hawaii, where indigenous scholars and communities have requested conference organizers to refrain from travelling. We also believe that remote access can support the protection of territories that currently suffer from over-tourism and settler colonialism. In solidarity with indigenous communities, we call STS scholars to practice remote access.
3. Disability Justice: In the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, people who are immunocompromised rely on remote access to participate safely in a context where masking is regrettably no longer a standard practice. Remote access is also essential for people for whom traveling overseas is expensive or inaccessible.
4. Solidarity against borders: As border controls and immigration policies become stricter and more dangerous, it is essential STS conferences enable remote access. The participation in scholarly discussions should not be contingent on one’s nationality, or background (this could encompass residence permit, visa-, asylum status, and so forth). Nor should it force scholars in marginalized positions to endure border controls.
5. Financial accessibility: Not all researchers count with the financial support to carry out their research and attend conferences. Regardless of one’s financial situation and affiliation, STS scholars should be able to participate in STS meetings and conferences.
6. The importance of transparency and accountability: Hosting conferences costs money and so does the provision of functioning technical infrastructure for remote participation. We ask all STS associations and their conference committees to be transparent about their spendings and their budget. This would allow a comprehensive overview of costs when planning and providing remote access, and lead to political legitimacy and support among members and conference participants. This information should be made accessible on the webpages, so members and interested scholars can comprehend how the money is raised and spent, allowing traceability of conference and membership fees. 
7. Hybrid and inclusive conferences are possible! We know this thanks to the wisdom and practices of disabled scholars and activists, and from the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many conferences around the world have learned from disability justice and the pandemic to enable more flexible and equitable forms of participation that also facilitate people outside academia can participate. One recent good example is the remote and inclusive hypestudies conference that took place in Barcelona, 10th-12th September.

Importantly, the need for remote access underscores the role of accessibility chairs and intersectional forms of accessibility at STS conferences. We hope many people can sign this petition to show our community how remote access and financial transparency matter now more than ever.

For questions, queries, feedback or ideas regarding the petition, please write to us at stsforall@posteo.com

The initiators of the petition
Barbara N. Carreras and Jascha Bareis

Image description: A banner reads "Remote Access in STS". The abbreviation stands for Science and Technology Studies. Around the text there are drawings depicting three persons in different locations and a huge set of leaves. There is a hummingbird sipping nectar from small purple flowers. Close by, a man on a power wheelchair is attending to the hummingbirds movements. He wears summer clothes and proudly showcases a scarf with the message access is love around his neck. Another drawing shows a woman using headphones while reading or watching something on a tablet.  A blind person is using a refreshable braille display to write a note. The colors of the entire illustration evoke the texture of crayons on watercolor paper, the smooth and sticky blue ink of a pen, and the coldness of greenish-yellow highlighter ink.