Mag.a Dr.in Katja Mayer

Senior Post Doc

(Elise Richter Fellowship FWF)

The Politics of Openness

Tel: +43-1-4277-49612
eMail: katja.mayer@univie.ac.at

Biography

Katja Mayer is a sociologist and works at the interface of science, technology and society. Since 2019, she is working as senior postdoc with the Elise Richter Fellowship (FWF) at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on the interaction between social science methods and their public spheres.

As part of her postdoc position at the Professorship of Computational Social Science and Big Data, she researched and taught in the field of "Critical Data Studies" at TU Munich.

Her focus is on the cultural, ethical and socio-technical challenges at the interface of computer science, social sciences and society. Data is treated less as a new raw material, but as a highly variable and fragile phenomenon. In the context of data-driven decision-making, data are not considered as "given", but the way we collect, transform, analyze, and trust data is up for discussion.

In addition, Katja also works as Senior Scientist at the Center for Social Innovation in Vienna and is an Associate Researcher at the University of Vienna's platform "Responsible Research and Innovation in Scientific Practice". For many years she has been teaching Sociology, STS and Web Sciences at the University of Vienna, the Danube University Krems, the University of Art and Design Linz and the University of Lucerne. She was a visiting fellow at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (USA). She is a member of the core team of the Open Access Network Austria (OANA) and co-heads the working group "National Strategy for the Transition to Open Science". In the years 2011-2013 she was a research fellow of the President of the European Research Council (ERC).

Publications

Troubled Orbits and Earthly Concerns: Space Debris as a Boundary Infrastructure

Author(s)
Chlormann Michael, Nina Klimburg-Witjes
Abstract

Like other forms of debris in terrestrial and marine environments, space debris prompts questions about how we can live with the material remains of technological endeavors past and yet to come. Although techno-societies fundamentally rely on space infrastructures, they so far have failed to address the infrastructural challenge of debris. Only very recently has the awareness of space debris as a severe risk to both space and Earth infrastructures increased within the space community. One reason for this is the renewed momentum of interplanetary space exploration, including the colonization of the Moon and Mars, which is part of transhumanist and commercially driven dreams of the so-called New Space age. Understanding space infrastructures as inherently linked to earthly infrastructure, we attend to the ways in which space debris, a once accepted by-product of scientific-technological progress, economic interests, and geopolitics, increasingly becomes a matter of concern. Drawing on qualitative interviews with European space sector representatives and work in Science and Technology Studies on infrastructures, we argue that their discursive efforts and visual representation strategies coproduce space debris as a boundary infrastructure. We suggest considering this boundary infrastructure as relating orbital environments and the planet through enacting sustainability and responsibility for beyond-planetary environments.

Organisation(s)
Department of Science and Technology Studies
External organisation(s)
Technische Universität München
Journal
Science, Technology & Human Values
Volume
47
Pages
960-985
No. of pages
26
ISSN
0162-2439
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/01622439211023554
Publication date
2021
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
103038 Space exploration, 509017 Social studies of science, 509025 Technology studies
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Anthropology, Economics and Econometrics, Philosophy, Human-Computer Interaction, Social Sciences (miscellaneous), Sociology and Political Science
Sustainable Development Goals
SDG 14 - Life Below Water
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/troubled-orbits-and-earthly-concerns-space-debris-as-a-boundary-infrastructure(7bb84a30-5427-4fdd-9080-f7d98add9a21).html