Earth Day talk to inaugurate Trevor Pinch Memorial Lecture series

The inaugural lecture in the Trevor Pinch Memorial Lecture Series for Innovative STS (Science and Technology Studies) will be held on Wednesday, April 22, to coincide with Earth Day. Sociologist Steven Yearley will give a talk titled "Sink Politics: Natural Knowledge and Climate Policy" at 3:30 p.m. in Atkinson Hall, room 121. The event is free and the public is welcome.

"Trevor Pinch was one of the most exciting and brilliant STS scholars in the world, so it's entirely fitting that the lecture series in his honor aims to showcase not just 'good' STS, but genuinely innovative scholarship. We're delighted that our first speaker will be Steven Yearley from the University of Edinburgh," said Suman Seth, Marie Underhill Noll Professor of the History of Science and chair of the Department of Science and Technology Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. "Steve's talk, scheduled for Earth Day, 2026, looks at climate politics and technoscientific knowledge and I anticipate that it will be lively, possibly contentious, and definitely fascinating."

In his talk Yearley will highlight the changing ways scientists, campaigners, the climate-policy communities and national policymakers have thought about and, increasingly, acted on carbon or greenhouse-gas "sinks" in the last three decades. "Sinks" are the natural absorption of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases by natural processes; for example, dissolved in the oceans or taken up by trees, soils and animals with shells.