Home Page Department of Science, Technology and Society

The department was created in 1987 by the Board of Utrecht University and by the departments (then faculties) of Chemistry, Biology, and Physics and Astronomy, with the objective to strengthen and coordinate the education and research activities at Utrecht University in the field of Science, Technology and Society. The department is located within the department of Chemistry of the Science Faculty and is part of the Copernicus Institute

Research Mission
The overall objective of the research activities of STS-UU is to obtain insight in and reflect critically upon the interaction between natural sciences and society. Such insights and reflections should facilitate the use of technical and scientific knowledge in such a way that a sustainable development of society can be obtained. STS-UU wants to make a significant contribution to this development in the areas that are covered by the research of the department. The mission of the department is to investigate which contributions science and technology can make to a sustainable development of society. This is done by both reactive and pro-active research in the areas of energy, environment and land-use.

Key research themes
Based on the expertise of STS-UU, the scientific and social challenges to achieve sustainable development, the research needs to fulfil educational demands to our department, and the participation of STS in SENSE and COPERNICUS, we decided to focus our research programme, called 'Energy, Environment and Land Use', on the following research themes:

STS is a member of the research school SENSE (Netherlands Research School for the Socio Economic and Natural Sciences of the Environment).

Education
The department provides education for bachelor’s programmes, master’s programmes and a PhD programme.Bachelor’s programmes:

• Chemistry,
• Biology,
• Environmental Studies, and

Science and Innovation Management Master´s programmes:
;
• Energy Science (Graduate school of Natural Sciences)
• Environmental Biology (Graduate school of Life Sciences).

PhD programme:
• SENSE (Netherlands Research School for the Socio Economic and Natural Sciences of the Environment) The department has about 50 employees. They are involved in numerous projects, courses and activities and most of them are also active within a number of networks, in- or outside Utrecht University, nationally as well as internationally.