[PCST] CfP Conference: Risky entanglements? Contemporary research cultures imagined and practised

[Joachim Allgaier]

International Conference 2010

Risky entanglements?
Contemporary research cultures imagined and practised

When: 9-11 June 2010

Where: Albert Schweitzer Haus, Vienna

Key Speakers:

Philip Campbell (Editor-in-Chief, Nature)
Ulrike Felt (University of Vienna)
Lisa Garforth (Newcastle University)
Pierre-Benoît Joly (INRA, Paris)
Mike Michael (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Helga Nowotny (European Research Council)
Steven Shapin (Harvard University)
Ruth Wodak (Lancaster University)

Organisers: Department of Social Studies of Science, University of Vienna

Abstract Submission Deadline: 29 January 2010 (maximum length 500 words)

Recent key macro studies agree that scientific research is increasingly
entangled in various societal rationales. On the one hand, these
analyses should be understood within the context of the growing
importance attributed to scientific and technological innovation for
shaping contemporary societies. On the other hand, society's readiness
to contribute to an innovation-friendly climate is considered a
key-asset for materializing this imagined progress. For both issues, the
human side of science, thus researchers and their way of doing research,
their values and their readiness to engage with both science and
society, is perceived as essential.

As this unfolds on a global scale, it is interesting to observe within
research policy and science institutions the convergence of various
discourses that stress and imagine what seem to be the key values or
myths guiding research today: excellence, accountability, mobility,
flexibility, ethical conduct, societal relevance or application
orientation, to mention but a few. However, far too little analytic
attention has been devoted to (1) how these broad and ostensibly
universal notions impinge on different work and knowledge production
cultures, (2) how specific local histories and contingencies play out in
practice, (3) how these global changes get refracted locally and
personally, and (4) how all this re-frames what being a researcher today
actually means. This lack seems astonishing given the importance the
'human factor' is attributed in current policy discourses around innovation.

This conference invites contributions that address change and continuity
of work and knowledge production cultures in research, and ask in which
processes ethical, societal and economic rationales shape these very
cultures. Of particular interest are contributions that are combining
more refined empirical analyses with broader theoretical frameworks of
change. By combining works that address different regional-historical
contexts and different scientific fields, the conference's explicit goal
is to open up comparative perspectives, thus contributing to a broader
understanding of contemporary research cultures.

Conference Themes

Research Cultures and Regimes of Innovation

How do academic and economic/corporate logics intersect and interact in
today's research environment? Which new hybrid institutions between
"academia" and "industry" arise and how is knowledge production
structured in these contexts? Which roles do patents and the ownership
of knowledge play in this? What are the contemporary specificities of
spaces and places where knowledge is actually produced and communicated?

The Social and Temporal Organisation of Research

How has the social and temporal organisation of research changed? Which
new roles and responsibilities for researchers come along with these
changes? Which broader institutional changes frame these new forms of
temporal and social organisation? How does this impinge on research
practice?

Ethics in (Research) Practice

How do ethical considerations figure in actual research processes? Where
are spaces and places where ethics is pondered and debated? How do
institutional "ethical" processes (e.g. in journals or committees)
impinge on research culture and practice? What are the intentions and
the effects of formulating and codifying what good scientific practices
are? What are the tensions arising between a global vision of science
and local ethical understandings?

Biographies and Careers in Science

How do scientists envision and plan their careers and how do
institutions shape this process? How "transgressive" are careers to
other fields of employment? In how far have scientific biographies
changed over the past decades, and how does this impinge on actual
research practice? Which role do social, ethical and economic
considerations play in these processes?

Rituals of Assessing Academic Work

How do new notions of quality and the rituals of ascribing and
monitoring it reshape academic biographies and actual research practice?
Which new forms of stratification are introduced in particular through
audit and ranking practives? Does academic audit contribute to
transparency and social robustness, or does it produce closure towards
society?

Socialising Future Researchers for a New Kind of Science?

How are the professional norms and values of one generation of
scientists transferred to the next? How are changes in culture and
practice of the sciences reflected in the socialisation of young
scientists? What role do ethical as well as socio-economic
considerations play in these socialisation processes? Are there any
ruptures in this process?

Economies of Promise: Imagined Futures as a Resource of Science

What role does the ever-increasing importance of promised future
societal benefit play in scientific practice? How do these envisioned
socio-scientific futures change how scientists approach problems and
structure their research? Which institutional constellations are
relevant in this economy of promises? Do particular funding policies
have an impact on economies of promise and imagined futures?

Public Debates and Research Cultures

How do broader societal debates influence research practice? How does
the increasing media coverage of science and scientists impinge on their
self-understanding and their actual work? What images of scientific work
and research practice arise from media representations of research in
science and the humanities? Does public engagement influence research
cultures, and in which processes?


A limited number of bursaries for the financial support of junior
scholars is available.

For further details about the submission of abstracts, registration fees
etc. see:

http://sciencestudies.univie.ac.at/events/conference2010/

Contact

Joachim Allgaier or Ulrike Felt
E-mail: conference.sciencestudies (at) univie.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 4277-49610 or -49601
Fax: +43 1 4277-9496

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