Science and Technology Studies
STS program investigates the foundations, history, and social impact of STEM through diverse research methods and interdisciplinary studies.
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation
Due Dates: February 2, 2027 (Except DDRIGs) | March 1, 2027 (REU supplements, ideal) | August 3, 2027 (All grant types, including DDRIGs) | No deadlines (EAGER and RAISE)
Funding Amounts: $6.2 million estimated program funding; category-specific awards from up to $25,000 for DDRIGs to $1 million for RAISE
Summary: Supports historical, philosophical, and social scientific research on STEM’s conceptual foundations, development, practices, and social contexts.
Key Information: Applicant and PI eligibility depend on the grant mechanism; dissertation grants require institutional submission with the dissertation director as PI.
Description
NSF’s Science and Technology Studies (STS) program supports interdisciplinary research examining science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, including medical science. Projects may be empirical or conceptual, addressing intellectual, material, or social dimensions of STEM. Supported approaches include fieldwork, historical archives, secondary data, conceptual analysis, and methods drawn from the social sciences and humanities.
The program encourages research on how scientific knowledge is produced and challenged, how technologies develop and circulate, and how STEM and society influence each other. It particularly encourages multiple disciplinary perspectives on complex socio-technical and techno-scientific problems. Alongside basic research, STS supports scholarly research infrastructure, community development, conferences, dissertation research, and selected NSF-wide mechanisms. The program is administered by the Division of Social and Economic Sciences within NSF’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.
