In times of COVID-19

In recognition of the various ways in which the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic is affecting Mattering Press Board Members, Editors, their families, as well as colleagues involved in the making of our books (reviewers, designers, typesetters, proof-readers, printers), the Mattering Press Board has decided to scale back some of our activities from 29th January onwards. This will have the following impacts:

  • A temporary suspension of reviewing new proposals.
  • Possible delays to the book production process.

Where possible we will prioritise our work to support precarious and early career scholars.

We do not take this step lightly. We love working with our community to support and promote innovative and experimental open-access writing. However, we are living through exceptional times and feel strongly that academic life cannot be expected to continue without full and serious recognition of this situation.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

Audre Lorde, 1988

Moreover, we are committed to putting into practice the principles of care that STS scholars so often theorise, and we encourage others in the academic community to do the same. The suspension of all but essential Mattering Press activities will continue until June 2021, after which the Board will review whether normal activities can be resumed or if the suspension should continue. If you have any questions about this please contact us: info@matteringpress.org

Mattering Press is a UK registered charity led by STS scholars who give their time to the press for free. Donations and purchases of hard copies of our books help fund our work.

Our full catalogue is shown below.

    Sensing In/Security

    Sensors as Transnational Security Infrastructures

    Edited by Nina Klimburg-Witjes, Nikolaus Poechhacker & Geoffrey C. Bowker

    FORTHCOMING, VERY SOON!!! Sensing In/Security: Sensors as Transnational Security Infrastructures investigates how sensors and sensing practices enact regimes of security and insecurity. It extends long-standing concerns with infrastructuring to emergent modes of surveillance and control by exploring how digitally networked sensors shape securitisation practices. Contributions in this volume examine how sensing devices gain political and epistemic…Read more

    Energy Worlds in Experiment

    Edited by James Maguire, Laura Watts & Brit Ross Winthereik

    Energy Worlds in Experiment is an experiment in writing about energy and an exploration of energy infrastructures as experiments. Twenty authors have written collaborative chapters that examine energy politics and practices, from electricity cables and energy monitors to swamps and estuaries.  Each chapter proposes a unique format to tell energy worlds differently and to stimulate…Read more

    Five Theses on Energy Polities

    A pre-print chapter from the forthcoming volume 'Energy Worlds in Experiment'

    by Brit Ross Winthereik, Stefan Helmreich, Damian O’Doherty, Mónica Amador-Jiménez and Noortje Marres. Edited by James Maguire, Laura Watts and Brit Ross Winthereik

    • Download PDF
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    • Publication date: 2021-01-25

    ‘Five Theses on Energy Polities’ is a pre-print chapter from the forthcoming volume ‘Energy Worlds in Experiment’ edited by James Maguire, Laura Watts and Brit Ross Winthereik. The full volume will be published in a print and free online version in Spring 2021. Please send us an email (info@matteringpress.org) if you are interested in reviewing the…Read more

    Sensing In/Security (pre-print)

    Sensors as transnational security infrastructures

    Edited by Nina Klimburg-Witjes, Nikolaus Poechhacker, Geoffrey C. Bowker

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    PRE-PRINT EDITION This rich and extensive collection of studies examines sensors and sensing at the intersections of Critical Security Studies and Science and Technology Studies. Lucy Suchman, Lancaster University Sensing In/Security is a book project that investigates how sensors and sensing practices enact regimes of security and insecurity. It extends long standing concerns with infrastructuring…Read more

    Boxes: A Field Guide

    Edited by Susanne Bauer, Martina Schlünder, Maria Rentetzi

    A book full of boxes. A box in itself. An unboxing. This book explores boxes in their broadest sense and size. It invites us to step into the field, unravel how and why things are contained and how it might be otherwise. By turning the focus of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to boxing practices,…Read more

    An Anthropology of Common Ground

    Awkward Encounters in Heritage Work

    Nathalia Brichet

    Paying attention to details and ‘small stories’ as that which make worlds (heritage projects as well as ethnography), the book proposes a kind of postcolonial scholarship. Rather than uncovering or building up one story about the Danish-Ghanaian past, the work insists on providing ‘inconclusive’ analyses, collaboratively generated in the course of the project work and…Read more

    Ghost-Managed Medicine

    Big Pharma's Invisible Hands

    by Sergio Sismondo

    Ghost-Managed Medicine by Sergio Sismondo explores a spectral side of medical knowledge, based in pharmaceutical industry tactics and practices. Hidden from the public view, the many invisible hands of the pharmaceutical industry and its agents channel streams of drug information and knowledge from contract research organizations (that extract data from experimental bodies) to publication planners…Read more

    Inventing the Social

    Edited by Noortje Marres, Michael Guggenheim, Alex Wilkie

    Inventing the Social, edited by Noortje Marres, Michael Guggenheim and Alex Wilkie, showcases recent efforts to develop new ways of knowing society that combine social research with creative practice. With contributions from leading figures in sociology, architecture, geography, design, anthropology, and digital media, the book provides practical and conceptual pointers on how to move beyond…Read more

    The Ethnographic Case

    Edited by Emily Yates-Doerr and Christine Labuski

    The Ethnographic Case is an experimental, online, Open Access book, that invites readers to interact with it in a process of post-publication peer review. The book challenges a widespread academic inclination to treat concepts as immutable mobiles. The contributions to this volume develop “ethnographic casing” as a technique of attending to heterogeneities in systems of thought. Medical cases. Legal cases. Briefcases. Detective cases. Some cases featured are violent, others compassionate; some set stereotypes in motion, others break them

    Energy Babble

    Authored by Andy Boucher, Bill Gaver, Tobie Kerridge, Mike Michael, Liliana Ovalle, Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, and Alex Wilkie

    This is the story of a set of computational devices called Energy Babbles. The product of a collaboration between designers and STS researchers, Energy Babbles are like automated talk radios obsessed with energy. Synthesised voices, punctuated by occasional jingles, recount energy policy announcements, remarks about energy conservation made on social media, information about current energy…Read more