STS Director Dr. Paul Edwards Awarded 2025 Bernal Prize
The Society for Social Studies of Science annually awards the Bernal Prize to an individual who has made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Past winners have included founders of the field, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. The 2025 Prizes go to Paul N. Edwards, Director of the Program in Science, Technology and Society at Stanford University, and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Through critical studies of scientific infrastructures and large-scale data systems, Paul N. Edwards has transformed our understanding of climate science and the Anthropocene. Edwards’ first book, The Closed World (MIT 1996), illuminated the mutual shaping of computers, Cold War military strategy, and the cognitive sciences after World War II. His second book, A Vast Machine (MIT 2010), a wide-ranging history of climate data infrastructure, received major awards from the Society for the History of Technology and the American Meteorological Society. Through his rigorous scholarship and inspiring teaching and mentorship, Paul N. Edwards has consistently demonstrated the power of STS to address and to reshape planetary predicaments and societal challenges. In our fraught times, his work is a model for how critical inquiry might transform governance and policy.