Keilty, Patrick, M. Murphy, Banu Subramaniam, Irina Aristarkhova, and Kiran Pienaar. 2025. “Reflections on Catalyst’s Legacy and Future: Patrick Keilty, M. Murphy, and Banu Subramaniam with Irina Aristarkhova and Kiran Pienaar.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2): 1–16. http://www.catalystjournal.org | ISSN: 2380-3312 © Patrick Keilty, M. Murphy, Banu Subramaniam, Irina Aristarkhova, and Kiran Pienaar. 2025 | Licensed to the Catalyst Project under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license Reflections on Catalyst’s Legacy and Future: Patrick Keilty, M. Murphy, and Banu Subramaniam in Conversation with Irina Aristarkhova and Kiran Pienaar Patrick Keilty University of Toronto p.keilty@utoronto.ca M. Murphy University of Toronto michelle.murphy@utoronto.ca Banu Subramaniam Wellesley College bs108@wellesley.edu Irina Aristarkhova University of Michigan airina@umich.edu Kiran Pienaar Deakin University kiran.pienaar@deakin.edu.au Abstract To mark the ten-year anniversary of Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, former and current editors reflect on the journal's origins, its contributions to feminist technoscience, and their aspirations for Catalyst in the next ten years and beyond. The discussion was recorded on Zoom, transcribed verbatim and edited for clarity. Presented in the original conversation format, the piece offers insights into the rich histories and intellectual legacies that have shaped Catalyst, and the feminist ethos that underpins the journal's scholarship and editorial practices. mailto:p.keilty@utoronto.ca mailto:michelle.murphy@utoronto.ca mailto:bs108@wellesley.edu mailto:airina@umich.edu mailto:kiran.pienaar@deakin.edu.au Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 2 Keywords Feminist technoscience, Catalyst, feminist ethos, editorial practices Kiran Pienaar (KP): Maybe we could start with an overarching question. What are your thoughts on the key contributions of Catalyst to the interdisciplinary field of technoscience? Banu Subramaniam (BS): I think for many of us, we were working to fill a void. So many of us had tried to publish in mainstream journals, both STS [science and technology studies] and disciplinary journals. Our conclusion was often that they didn’t get it. When our work was accepted, the reviews and editors often asked for edits that took out the more radical parts of our work—especially those that centered gender, race, and sexuality. How do we find a place to center intersectional feminist work in STS? I think that was this void that we hoped we were filling. In hindsight, it seems clearly we were. I remember towards the end of our term, when Murphy, I think you did that, surveyed the work that we had published in the journal, the evidence showed that we had indeed filled that void. There was work out there that could not find a home and Catalyst opened up that space. It was so clear that people were looking for both a journal but also the reviewers who understood what they were doing. Patrick Keilty (PK): Yeah. M. Murphy (MM): I agree with Banu. The beginning of imagining Catalyst was, in part, about thinking how difficult it was to get published, particularly, always having that annoying “reviewer number two.” Some of us were in science studies or history science programs, but most of us were not. We were distributed in so many different disciplines and felt like we needed to build something intergenerational that would help all our colleagues get tenure and have a place to publish with support. So it was not only having a journal where you could have reviewers who understood you. You also might have an editorial approach that would have a kind of mentoring and supportive approach. Feminist science studies might even be an inadequate name for Catalyst. It’s more like a feminist, queer, anti-colonial, anti-racist critical science studies. It’s this kind of expansive knot. We were also supporting people who might be, on the one hand, coming from physics and trying to do feminist or queer work. On the other hand, they might be coming from a particular discipline that does an art practice as opposed to a scientific training. What does it mean to create a journal that could hold all of this in a supportive way to make our fantasy field? This was the idea behind the journal. Then, of course, we also had this idea of “We don’t want a paywall and we can do it ourselves.” Thinking with Banu’s point about hindsight, Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 3 that decision is really challenging. It’s really challenging to make a long-standing journal without a paywall and thus without a source of steady funding, or without a managing editor team being supported by an association. The fact that we have Catalyst turning ten years old in this format is really a testament to something beautiful in the field. A testament to some kind of meaningfulness in the project of making feminist STS. BS: [jokingly] I think that decision has haunted editorial teams ever since. PK: We did get a royalty check from one of these research databases. I mean, it wasn’t for much but I remember thinking, “Well, there’s a revenue stream now.” I don’t remember which one it was. It was definitely not Scopus. KP: Thank you for those reflections. That really echoes our experience and our sense of what the journal is and its significant place in the field. BS: The only other thing I want to add is that I said yes because of these two [Patrick and Murphy]. The idea that I would get to see them every week was enticing because normally we wouldn’t. And the process of working with them was so fun—both personally but also intellectually. We discussed STS content but problem-solved so much. I don’t know, I haven’t seen these two together since the journal. PK: It was a truly lovely group of people to work with, including the students we worked with. They were all fantastic. BS: Who [the previous students] are faculty now. PK: Yeah, who are faculty now, that’s right. Not all editorial experiences are that smooth. That was really unique and nice. I think that speaks to the commitment to a shared vision and values about what editorial work should look like. I mean, I really appreciated the generosity to the authors and the constructive feedback. The fact that reviewers wouldn’t just provide negative comments, but would actually try to make comments that improved the paper. They met the author where they were at rather than assuming that the author should always be speaking on their terms. I think that made for a better journal and made for better scholarship. KP: Yeah, absolutely. That’s something that I certainly think is really distinctive about Catalyst. I wonder if you could speak a bit [about that]. Given that we have this aim of developmental editing and careful, constructive, generous critique for scholars, particularly perhaps, early career scholars or postgraduate students who are thinking of submitting to Catalyst for the first time. What advice would you give them? MM: Well, first of all, I’d say, “Do it.” [Nods and words of agreement from the other speakers.] Sometimes you get this advice as an emerging scholar or newer scholar suggesting you really have to try to fit yourself to a journal. In Catalyst, you can Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 4 have so many genres of work, what you have to do is not fit a genre but join a conversation, a citational cluster or a scholarly cluster. Rather than try to have an assumption that feminist science studies should look a particular way, the point is to bring your heterogeneity into the collectivity. So I think that’s very invitational. BS: The other thing I felt from the beginning, and it seems true right through, there was never a canon that any of us imagined for the field where you have to cite “XYZ” and if not, you’re no good. With each editorial team, they have remade it in a different way. None of us have felt possessive to say, “Oh, this is all wrong.” I think it’s that capacious view of the field that is so critical for both Catalyst and the field of feminist STS. It will go where it goes, you know? That’s part of the beauty of the field. KP: Not trying to get people to shoehorn their work into some imagined space of what the field should look like. BS: Also, the three of us may think something but it’s a different editorial team now. PK: Yeah, and I actually really admire the way each of the different teams was able to hand things over and the generosity of that handoff. I think, even for us, we built in some time for handover, right? Knowing that the next group was going to take it in a different direction. There was, I agree, no territorialism about that or need for it to be done our way. MM: We could make a joke and say that we were constantly inventing process. We were very feminist in that way. And then we were [discussing], “How can we write documents for each other that explain our process?” I think each team has reinvented even more processes. We’ve gotten thicker and thicker with this kind of processual commitment. I would say that was a beautiful and funny form that really shows our feminism. KP: Certainly, we’ve inherited that. Then when the new team comes on and they ask, “So why do you do it this way? Why do you have all of these different programs and platforms?” We explain, “Well, this one is a legacy, I don’t know why we have this one, but it’s all enfolded and intertwined. Sometimes disentangling history and the legacy is not really easy.” Yeah, you can definitely see it, because we work across multiple platforms. I think that has its advantages but it can also lead to duplication. We’re trying to streamline it so we can hand over a system that makes sense to the next team. Having said that, as you were saying, Murphy, it’s constantly in transformation. I think maybe that is the beauty of it. That’s what helps us sustain it. Irina Aristarkhova (IA): I will add back to what you were saying when describing how you started and how you worked together. In reference to what we are passing on, it’s tough in terms of resources. I think I probably talked about it at the Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 5 editorial board meeting before. In actuality, the “perceived weaknesses” of always scrambling and not having enough funding but being our fiercely independent selves, which is now under attack, is a freedom. We’re buying freedom because we don’t have money. We don’t need to scramble like the other journals who approach us, like many do, with questions like, “Are you going to exist if such and such funding will be taken off?” So I appreciate so much what you created and that what is transferred is transferable. Working with Kiran, Robyn [Lee], and the rest of the team is what we signed up for: to do this work. This is part of the whole journey and I’m so grateful that at this moment, it’s almost like one of those Buddhist fables, right? You think you are in trouble but actually this very trouble will become your salvation. We are living in this moment and recognizing it. It’s particularly pertinent to our conversation now with those methodologies and those intersectional feminist choices. BS: I remember there was a moment when we moved platforms and we had to go individually through articles and move them across platforms. We just made an online party out of it. We all got on a Zoom call and did it together, which made it so much more joyous. I’m no longer on the larger board that meets regularly, but anytime Catalyst asks me to review something, I will always say yes. So there is that commitment to the field and the journal, in part because of the people who run it and the politics that has stayed throughout, which is rare for a journal. PK: I’d forgotten about that migration. There were other parties. We had document parties and migration parties. KP: I love that. I love the sense of play and fun. Doing it in community is also distinctive and a refreshing change from the neoliberal imperatives of the academy. Instead, to hold each other up and see how we can support each other. How can we make this endeavor that we’re all so committed to fun? I think that’s beautiful. MM: It’s very feminist science studies in the way that you’re also learning about programming and you’re making data sets or you’re documenting technical practice as well as thinking about intellectual editorial visions. Catalyst has that “doing” side of feminist science studies or critical science studies where the doing is supposed to somehow reflect our political commitments. PK: I was just going to extend Banu’s comment about the platform transfer. I think there was also an upgrade to the platform we were using, which, I think, moved around where they used to be and it was in a different place. So there was this constant process of having to relearn. MM: The journal is still at the U of T’s [University of Toronto] Library, who hosts this kind of open-source journal. So that's where it is physically even if it seems like it’s in the cloud. Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 6 PK: Yes, it’s on servers and I think they’re technically in Kingston, Ontario, but yes, they are on U of T servers. KP: Oh, wow! We’ve inherited that legacy and it lives on, that’s amazing. Can you talk to us a bit more about the challenges you faced in wanting the journal to be open access and as you were mentioning, Patrick, the challenges in making it searchable? How did you overcome the challenges? PK: I mean, I just cold emailed these really important databases. I also didn’t realize how many middlemen there were between the library catalog and the searchable databases. Companies like RefWorks would help to create some of the metadata that allowed the interoperability of these systems. There were a lot of emails exchanged and a lot of forms filled out incorrectly and then refilled out again. We were very lucky at the University of Toronto to have librarians helping us throughout the process. They were really wonderful, solicitous, and they got back to us really quickly. They would walk us through these different processes. You had to supply some of the scholarly databases and you had to supply them with a lot of information about yourself. They really wanted to verify that you were credible before they would include you in their database. At the end of the day, their database is a for-profit platform. It’s more profitable to them if they include more scholarly journals. It’s not like they didn’t want us to be part of it, but there was a little bit of gatekeeping in terms of credentialing that we had to overcome. MM: A big, related challenge was coming together and trying to find our resources every year. Seeing who can find an RA [research assistant] or hitting up 4S [Society for Social Studies of Science] to see if they’ll give us a little bit of money. It’s this weird feeling. On the one hand, we could say feminist science studies has been long at the core of science studies and 4S by looking at its presidents or the importance of Donna Haraway, [Susan] Leigh Star, and so many others. At the same time, Catalyst couldn’t quite get in enough to be one of their main official journals. We eventually got a “stamp of the logo,” but the journal is both in and out of 4S. We were getting a little bit of support, but not necessarily the kind of support that you’d dream of. Planning Catalyst each year was a lot of “How can we connect senior scholars and people with richer universities with other universities that don’t have resources to put together a team based on this landscape of inequity?” Folks did a pretty good job of that over the years. That was a big part of trying to make Catalyst a space of, we could say, “freedom” in some ways. Untethered to a discipline. It doesn’t have to be accountable to science studies proper and it can be international and so forth. Still, when those resources don’t come through, someone’s staying up late at night getting it done, right? BS: This is one of the things that worries me because at each stage this has to continue on. At some point people might say, “This is too much work, let’s do something else with it [Catalyst].” It would lose the politics that has kept it alive all Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 7 this time. It’s something that worries me because it is remade each time with new labor and new commitments. MM: The journal is riding a different moment of feminist, anti-colonial, solidaristic, critical but also utopian politics about science and technology studies. Where is such a journal supposed to live? Which jurisdictions end up being able to put into that? I think, even in the scope of ten years it has shifted. We have a lot more people who are coming from Australia, more involvement from Europe, and involvement from Latin America. This is its own interesting topography. BS: It seems like there is a core belief that has held so far and I hope it will hold. It was really important for all of us to let go of the journal and our visions and trust that with new teams, new minds and new imaginations will take it to interesting places, and they have. KP: Certainly, that’s been my experience with the handover. Laura [Foster] was so supportive in handing over the reins and supporting us, without saying, “You need to follow this set of practices.” I just really appreciated the light touch that we had in terms of editorial direction and guidance without trying to steer us. Giving us the remit to say, you can now chart your agenda and your three-year term. I think you’re right to say that there’s something in that support and having a really good handover with the previous editorial team also stepping back and allowing the new team, with their new ideas, to take things forward in ways they may not have imagined that are unfolding iteratively. MM: Another wonderful feature of the journal is reflected in its weird structure where it has a “special section” that’s edited by a cluster of people outside of the core editorial team. Then you have the running “individually submitted” zone of the work that people are doing individually. So even in an issue, the editors have to let go because there’s another part inside that’s edited by people on the outside. I think that’s really lovely. BS: [jokingly] Sometimes they only let go so much. IA: [jokingly] It’s a gentle let go. MM: [jokingly] Let go, but be on time. [Laughter] IA: I want to mention what Patrick spoke about earlier [in relation to making Catalyst searchable in library catalogs and databases]. We are considering, as you know, [applying for Catalyst to be included on] the Web of Science [a bibliographic database of scholarly articles from peer-reviewed journals worldwide, which provides tools for search, citation analysis and bibliometrics]. Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 8 Robyn [Lee] spoke to the librarian from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Thane Chambers, who is helping us with that. It’s wonderful to hear this history before that. You are right, that it’s all about what kind of project it would be in terms of finding time to present it to them. I also really appreciate this lateral approach. Robyn went and spoke to a librarian and they got excited and said, “Look, your journal would have no problem, after already running for a decade.” A few months ago, I actually had the chance to sit down with Mara [Mills, former Catalyst editor] in New York and hear some of those stories about how the special sections came about. When Mara and David [Serlin, former Catalyst editor] said, “Okay, we can’t do it. Let’s think about the way in which we can just find a solution that would still be serving Catalyst’s ethos.” It’s amazing. BS: Ultimately, besides that, it was the copyeditor’s money that also drove it. That was the only thing that you really needed a sizable amount and if things became too large, the cost of copyediting became too large. I don’t know if this is still true? KP: It’s still true: Irina reminds us that authors need to at least try and stick to the length requirements; otherwise, it overshoots our copyediting budget. We can allow some leeway but not much. IA: Sometimes it’s the other way around; like, this time we had a few more people contribute and we thought, “Okay, these funds need to be spent. Robyn, what were you saying? How many words do they have? Don’t tell them to cut it because we can do that.” It’s kind of an iterative process, as my designer colleagues say. KP: You’ve touched on this, but I wonder if you could comment further. Given the climate in the United States at the moment, but also the climate across the world, what do you see as pressing concerns for the journal to address in the future? PK: Well, I was going to joke it’s a good thing Catalyst is on a Canadian server. BS: It’s a global audience so, yes, we can talk about parochialism and regression in the United States but the field is bigger than the US, which is what’s lovely about Catalyst, and it has been true all the way through to who has contributed to it. We will get through this here, but the field will always be beyond it, I think, except to mark the history and analyze what’s going on, which is very interesting. KP: And much needed. MM: I mean, my fantasy is that Catalyst would remain radically open to both critical thought but also genre forms. What are the genres and even the forms that are the most pressing? Critical sciences, critical feminism, trans, queer, anti- racist, anti-colonial, Indigenous science studies, what is that going to look like? When times are tough, it can be tempting to forget that you do need to dream Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 9 and keep up the project of constituting science and technology otherwise. I would like there to still be this visionary orientation. You need all the critical work in the context of the United States. And it is also a moment of “radical dreaming,” of other ways of doing that people step out of other traditions. I think Catalyst is a space where that could happen. For example, when we started, [Deboleena] Roy and Banu [Subramaniam] were the two saying we must hold space for scientists to bring forth political struggle and epistemological struggle in the journal. It can be a space where people are trying to manifest science otherwise, tech otherwise, under political duress, and in struggle. BS: This is very US-centric, but there’s a part of me that always thinks of which pieces of Catalyst to republish with redactions of all of Trump’s banned words or to use other words instead of that. So we get more genitally and, you know, use actual organs instead of words like gender and sex. Smooth over the details to be something raunchy, you know? MM: [jokingly] Something even more raunchy than the banned words. BS: Exactly! KP: You’re giving us great ideas. I love your ideas and that incredible vision. Did you want to chime in, Patrick? PK: No, I think that’s the perfect place. I mean, yeah, that seems perfect for me. I’ll just echo that and say I would love to see Catalyst become sexy. I mean, it already is sexy, but maybe sexier. IA: Yeah, I think just to add something again, what you are saying is so inspirational. Both, in terms of experimenting with form and having citizen science or actual scientists come to us. It continues to happen, like the March 2025 issue was pretty experimental in many ways, and one of the articles talks about effective contraception work in Argentina. I already sent that article to so many people and I’m like, “There is an article about the joy of abortion!” I want everyone to read that [sense of] embodiment and its community building through this work, as joyful. That type of work inspires us, for sure. KP: Yeah, I think one of the joys of Catalyst, for me, is that we get some interesting submissions. Then among the editorial team, we’re like, “This is a new genre, but yes, we can accommodate it.” Sometimes, it’s author driven—they’ve come up with a format, maybe it’s a short novel reflecting on feminist STS, or whatever it is. They’ve come up with something innovative and the great thing about Catalyst is we have space to accommodate that. We’re not answerable to a publisher, we’re not answerable to the imperatives, or to external imperatives that are pushing us in particular directions. We’re like, “Well, that’s a great innovation, why don’t we include that?” It’s that capaciousness that sustains the Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 10 journal and keeps it lively and fresh. If there was one topic or theme that you’d like to see featured in a Catalyst special section that we haven’t yet featured, what would it be? BS: [jokingly] I think it’s like, “Looking for a donor, a feminist donor.” I mean, I just think that if people gave no strings attached, what would be possible? Each journal is sometimes culled or pieces could be longer. MM: You’re so funny; I’m too serious on this. I would like to see a special section on Indigenous/Palestinian science and technology studies, that has a strong response to genocide. I’m drawing on a lot of the beautiful, Indigenous Palestinian thinking, but I think you could go broader than that, too. You could bring in feminist STS people from Bangladesh and other places that have been wrestling ongoingly with genocide now and in the recent past. I think something like that would be really powerful, important, and transnational but also speak to the United States. BS: I would also love more language translational work. So, for example, something happened in Bangladesh; they produced an issue, and then it got translated in all kinds of languages, but it kept the authenticity of the languages, like Bengali. I think that would be cool if you can imagine: centered in different places. MM: The last issue kind of had some inspiration of that so it kind of sparks the imagination for thinking about that. PK: A special section called “Works in Translation” or something. KP: Yeah, that’s actually a great idea because this last issue was in Spanish and English, and it’s the first bilingual issue. The guest editors had a statement about how they positioned it as a “pocho linguistic third space” because it wasn’t quite completely bilingual, and it included some terms they opted not to translate. In their introduction to the issue they gave an explanation of how they had come to their particular place in relation to the two languages. I think that was really novel and we wanted to create space for that. BS: I would also love more space for short films and videos because I find that students are better visual readers than textual readers these days. Since we are an online journal, opening up more space for more than images, for example, short films. IA: Yeah, I think, Deboleena mentioned that as well for multimedia content. I believe that there’s some kind of OJS [Open Journal Systems] challenge, submitting that or hosting it on the server, but we certainly can do it if people host it. It [would involve creating] a link to the visual images. With translation, I wonder whether we can pick it up, Kiran, in our discussions because there is specific language [in the journal guidelines] about only original and unpublished work https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/issue/view/2901 https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/44601 Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 11 being published. There might be some conversation about that because we’ve certainly had interest from people who, let's say, have both published work, but also [produced it] in a different format. We had someone who did a BBC audio [recording]. We had to turn it down because it was already a text which was read and it was not original from Catalyst’s point of view. You’re giving us ideas; what are the ways in which we can present it or link to it and benefit from it, without necessarily substituting this idea, that it would be the original work? BS: Even a special section of all videos with someone who did films to curate that. It would be interesting. KP: Yeah, the multimedia aspect, I think, is definitely a fun one to explore, and would make it really engaging. Deboleena [Roy] also had some great ideas for that. It’s nice to see that there’s actually quite a lot of convergence in what different teams are saying. What is your vision or aspiration, then, for Catalyst in the next ten years and beyond? You’ve touched on it, but if you’d like to expand a bit more with reflections on what you’d like to see? PK: I’d like it to expand beyond where it already has geographically. It’d be great to have more African scholars and more scholars from Asia. MM: I am excited by how Catalyst can bring things that seem, in part, like they might be incommensurate, into profound contact with one another. I think that would be a huge achievement. BS: I’m hearing so many stories of how people use Catalyst in the classroom and in other places. Angie Willie, my colleague at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, taught a whole course with only Catalyst articles. She went issue by issue. It was entirely a Catalyst course. She said it was fantastic. To make room for people teaching Catalyst, using Catalyst, because we all teach it, but how do you teach it? To make room for how to read, how to reinterpret, that would be cool. That’s a huge order beyond publishing a journal each time. KP: Banu, I don’t know if you saw Xan’s [Chacko] call? Xan has put out a call for this issue, asking people to share their reflections on how they’re using Catalyst for teaching. We might pick your brain for the name of that colleague again. BS: What I would love is something more organic, which is not necessarily part of the journal, but a forum, where people can post things. It’s not just the journal. Publishing the journal is what Catalyst does, and in a way, it limits what we do and if there’s a way to expand that, to more organic forms of putting posts or ideas. KP: Oh, I got you okay, so that people are contributing in dynamic ways. Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 12 MM: This is like the network in your book. Was it the “chirpnet?” What was it called again? Yeah, that’s like, you want a Catalyst “chirpnet.” KP: Tell us a bit about the “chirpnet” just for context. BS: Yeah, the idea was not quite Twitter, but a version of it. It was an online forum where kids across the world could talk to each other and share ideas. MM: Though speculative stories about chirpnet, Banu made an epistemic otherwise that was in between the chapters in her book. BS: But, you know, the current moment in the United States also does cause worry about that kind of complete openness. It has to be moderated and someone has to read what’s being posted. MM: [jokingly] Yeah, the dream of social media has kind of evaporated. KP: It’s become a bit of a dystopia. BS: There might be ways in which the core group could put out a call for someone who wants to moderate. So I also would love Catalyst to do an interview with people who publish books, or some kind of book forum with them. To highlight books in the field because we all teach these books. It would be nice to have something to show students who this person is, what their vision was, and a few people in the field speaking to it. MM: You mean not like a new book that’s just been book reviewed, but like a book that lots of people are thinking about that might not even be new? Interesting. One million ideas! PK: Building on Banu’s idea about how to teach Catalyst, I could see a section on pedagogical tips for teaching feminist science and tech studies generally. MM: Lovely idea, Patrick! We talked about this because lots of the work that feminist scientist people do is often pedagogical. We create beautiful assignments beyond just syllabi. How can we publish and share these kinds of pedagogical inventions and then also support people getting tenure by validating that we actually value pedagogical invention in addition to research invention? BS: Sometimes people put so much theoretical thought into curating a syllabus. KP: I really like that idea because one of the challenges we have with early career scholars, certainly in Australia, there are institutional imperatives to publish in a ranked journal. A lot of the early career scholars who are encouraged to submit to Catalyst say, “The journal’s not ranked. It won’t be institutionally legible in terms Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 13 of my application for tenure or my job applications, and I’m precarious so I need to make a call that’s strategic.” So maybe this is an intervention that also addresses that concern in relation to pedagogy. MM: That is important. This makes me think about how one of my favorite issues was the Crip Technoscience issue. It was excellent, and one of the reasons why was, in addition to all the awesome scholarship, it had all these offerings by people who were coming out of grassroot, crip technoscience knowledge and practices. Yes, a hope for Catalyst is that you can build it to support the need for a ranked journal, while also wanting it to hold the incredible contribution of people who aren’t in academia that contribute to STS. That was one of the premises Catalyst did a really good job with. KP: Yeah, and it’s holding both and not compromising. If you go the route of ranking and the neoliberal demands, then there’s a loss entailed in that. Having that space for being experimental, that I think is so unique to Catalyst and allowing space for diverse, shapeshifting genres. IA: Yeah, there’s no reason not to do both, kind of, strategically. I feel Catalyst already has been doing both, which is great. For example, including the network and then people write letters for each other, validating these forms, and this experimentation. There was one journal I submitted once that had a pedagogical, more curriculum-built essay with someone else which was in the form of an interview talking about feminist politics. I found a journal that had a curriculum section and it was online and open source. I’m just thinking whether it’s another thing we can discuss, Kiran, potentially having one more submission format. BS: Also, a way to reframe it because a lot of traditional disciplines see pedagogy as, “Oh, that’s teaching.” So how do you reframe it as a real intellectual project? Which is what it is, for many people who do it, not the old fogies who are teaching what they taught twenty years ago! So thinking how to reframe it in a way that brings the feminist STS and the ways in which we approach these questions. The same essay can be curated in different ways to do very different things. KP: This is what I love about Catalyst is it’s thinking outside of the box! It’s like the box is broken now let’s dispense with it and find new ways to do it. BS: Like put it in an epistemology category, you know? Not pedagogy. KP: Not pedagogy. IA: You know what’s funny? I already wrote down epistemologies, forms, and pedagogy. BS: Yeah, but on the other hand, I don’t want to valorize epistemology as more important than pedagogy. That’s our project also to highlight. https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/issue/view/2199 Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 14 IA: Practice is another good one. I love it. KP: Murphy, did you want to say something? You looked like you wanted to say something. MM: I was just thinking this conversation is very feminist science studies. If we think about what’s cool about this field, it does have at its center this profound curiosity across not just disciplines but practice, epistemology, ontology, and the people who are attracted to it are fabulous folks with all of these inventive ideas. Catalyst is this node in an expansive creative network. I’m sure, if we got five more people on this call, we’d come up with five more awesome formats, you know? PK: Yeah, well, I think that’s the benefit of having co-editors, right? Instead of just a single lead editor. You’re always bouncing ideas off each other, verifying what you think and getting new perspectives. BS: Even the special section goes beyond the team to the larger group. KP: Yeah, absolutely, it gives an opportunity for new voices, often early career starters who may not have had experience doing editorial work. I think our role is also to support them but without steering. Finding that balance is like gently shepherding. I’m conscious of the time, so I’ll just give you an opportunity to add anything that we haven’t covered. Any final reflections before we close? BS: I just miss Murphy and Patrick and not being able to talk to them each week. That’s all I’ll say. KP: [jokingly] I think we should have another interview to bring you all together. I’m glad that this was an opportunity to see your friends. BS: That’s on us, but, you know, it’s so good to see them. PK: It’s really good to see you, Banu. It’s always good to see you. MM: Yeah, agreed. PK: And I see Murphy. MM: We get together and have dinner and different things. Patrick’s an amazing cook. BS: Oh, is that right? MM: Yes, really outstanding. Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 15 BS: Next time I come! PK: Yes! Banu, I would love to cook for you. MM: Patrick’s comment that there is a joyful side that is possible to cultivate even in these most disconcerting and pessimistic times is a good place to end. How precious that is, even in academia at large. If Catalyst can keep doing that, how beautiful. BS: Indeed, because I feel we wrestled with a lot, but it was never with rancor. It was always with support. It was always trying to be imaginative and sometimes it was saying, “Okay, this can’t be done and that’s okay.” I think that was really unique, in terms of working. PK: Yeah, I agree, it was unique. It was really lovely. KP: I think we’ve continued in that spirit. From my perspective, Catalyst is such a joyful, supportive space, and it’s nourishing in so many ways that I hadn’t anticipated. I can’t speak for everyone else, but from my perspective on the editorial team, we’re certainly continuing that legacy. IA: [jokingly] Yeah, I’ll speak for everyone else to say that, yes, it’s extremely joyful. I will say that this is something that Laura [Foster] mentioned; she said, “It will be a ton of work. It’s difficult to do this, but then it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.” Now especially, it’s just so meaningful and nourishing. I’m like, if I can’t do anything but Catalyst, [providing a platform for] junior faculty, and students to support the kind of stuff we teach and we publish, it’s like, “Okay, I don’t need to. This is activism, as far as I’m concerned.” That feels really, really good, so thank you for that space. KP: Thank you all so much for your time. BS: Thank you for doing this. It’s such a great idea. KP: It’s an absolute pleasure. I’m glad that you decided not to do it in written form so that we could actually talk. It’s really lovely to meet you all as well. PK: Yeah, me too. That was Murphy changing my mind. At first, I was like, I guess we’ll write, right? Then Murphy was like, “Let’s do it by call.” So I’m glad. IA: That’s so nice. Thank you. Tenth Anniversary Section | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 11 (2) Keilty et al., 2025 16 Author Bios Patrick Keilty is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information and Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. Professor Keilty’s research interests focus on the politics of digital infrastructures in the sex industries, adult film, and the materiality of sexual media. M. Murphy is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Science and Technology Studies and Environmental Data Justice at the School of Environment and Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. They co-direct the Technoscience Research Unit. Banu Subramaniam is Chair and Luella LaMer Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. Banu is an interdisciplinary scholar, trained as an evolutionary biologist and plant scientist, who has since embraced tools from the humanities and social sciences to help shape the field of Feminist Science and Technology Studies. Irina Aristarkhova is Professor at the Stamps School of Art & Design and Associate Director of the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan. She is Co-Editor (Operations) at Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Kiran Pienaar is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. She is also Co-Editor (Production and Design) of Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Kiran is the author of Politics in the Making of HIV/AIDS in South Africa and co-editor of Narcofeminisms: Revisioning Drug Use. Reflections on Catalyst’s Legacy and Future: Patrick Keilty, M. Murphy, and Banu Subramaniam in Conversation with Irina Aristarkhova and Kiran Pienaar Abstract Keywords Author Bios