Despite Covid not yet being fully under control, East Asian STS scholars have gradually resumed their regular activities–in both conventional and innovative ways–in the wake of the first wave of the pandemic and have actively engaged in responding to it.
After the cancellation of its annual meeting in 2020 due to the pandemic, the History of Science Society of Japan, one of the oldest STS organizations in East Asia, resumed the meeting on 22 and 23 May 2021. Hosted by Kobe University, with EASTS editors Togo Tsukahara and Akihisa Setoguchi as local committee members, the meeting was conducted virtually. In addition to regular presentations and symposia/roundtables, it included two special symposia–one in memory of the historian of technology in Japan and former EASTS editor Aaron Moore (1972–2019) and his intellectual legacy, and the other on Covid from a history of science perspective (a memorial essay on Aaron Moore appeared in vol. 14, no. 1). Other STS-related sessions included symposia on the tenth anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake disaster and on the history of personal hygiene in the era of the pandemic. For a full program of the meeting, see https://sites.google.com/view/kagakusi2021/.
