The Master of Arts by Research degree program involves the completion of a thesis proposal and a research thesis. It is designed for students wishing to engage in serious research but not able to devote the three years required to complete a PhD or with a research project which does not lend itself to that level of extended treatment. Science and Technology Studies (STS) is a relatively new academic field within the social sciences and humanities that aims to explore, observationally or historically, how society shapes and in turn is reshaped by scientific and technological innovation. The social sciences and humanities historically developed alongside the emergence of new industrial orders, which were based upon the novel technologies of steam based power, the railways and the factory system. Marx analysed this new technological society as it unfolded around him in mid-nineteenth century Britain. However, during the twentieth century, social science has often struggled to keep pace with new and emerging technologies. It was slow to provide intelligence and reflexive analysis of such central new features of social life as personal automobility, the splitting of the atom, and computing. The field of science and technology studies takes the governance of science and technology as a central concern, in order to provide insights that are relevant to ongoing scientific, technological and social change. However, analysis of all ‘technosocial orders’ presents significant challenges to existing modes of social science and humanities scholarship, especially in seeking to examine a categorically social realm as distinct from physical and material elements. Historically, the academic literature has framed new scientific knowledge and technology as ‘black-boxed’ and self-sufficient, with an independent a social logic that results in ‘impacts’ or ‘effects’. Social questions are often narrowly framed as ‘impacts’ or ‘risk’ issues, placing the site of social science inquiry firmly ‘downstream’ of innovation processes. However, the development of a series of approaches in STS have shown how technologies are part and parcel of constitutive social relations. ‘Technical’ processes often make implicit assumptions about the social uses to which the technology will be put: under what conditions, by which kinds of actor, and with what aims. Work across STS suggests that any technology is its heterogeneous, hybrid mix of material, social and discursive relations, pure and applied sciences, and social expectations or assumptions, which may assume prescriptive force. A similar argument can be made about science as an instrument in world-making and re-making that often supports existing social relations, or alternatively may disrupt them. The field of STS is represented by major international scholarly societies, including the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S), the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST), Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA), IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology, Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), History of Science Society (HSS), British Society for the History of Science (BSHS), American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM), Japan Association for Science, Technology & Society (JASTS), Asia-Pacific Science Technology & Society Network (APSTSN), Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (AAHPSSS), Network for Science and Technology Studies in Africa (STS-Africa) and the Society for the Promotion of S&T Studies (India).