Univ.-Prof. Sarah Davies, BSc MSc PhD (sabbatical)

Universitätsprofessorin

eMail: sarah.davies@univie.ac.at

Biography

Sarah R. Davies is Professor of Technosciences, Materiality, & Digital Cultures at the Department of Science and Technology Studies. Her work explores how science and society are co-produced – how society defines the conditions of scientific research, and how science is present in wider society. The ‘red thread’ of the digital and digitisation runs throughout. She has written about hackers and hackerspaces, how scientists experience the conditions of contemporary academia, and science communication formats such as science festivals or museums.

Her PhD (2008) was carried out at Imperial College London. Since then her career has been highly international: she has worked in the UK, US, Denmark (as a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellow, before becoming associate professor) and Norway. She has published a number of books, including Hackerspaces (2017, Polity), Science Communication (2016, Palgrave, with Maja Horst), and Exploring Science Communication (2020, SAGE, with Ulrike Felt). She is a co-founder of the Science in Public conference series, sits on the scientific committee of the International Network for the Public Communication of Science and Technology, and has given more than 20 invited keynote talks and public lectures across Denmark, Switzerland, New Zealand, Austria, the US, UK, Germany, and France since 2014.

Professor Davies' inaugural lecture was held on 7 December 2022. You can find the text and video at the following links' here: Video & Full text

Current Research Interests

Davies’ current work includes involvement in the European project QUEST and in the project ‘Understanding gender imbalances among university professors: the shaping and reshaping of epistemic living spaces’ (GENDIM), coordinated by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. More generally she works on:

  • Critical studies of science communication, public engagement with science (including activism and protest), and amateur science;
  • Public interactions with digitised science and technology, including science on social media, subversion and negotiation of 'datafication', and data subjectivities;
  • The contemporary conditions of academic work and knowledge production
  • Digitisation within scientific knowledge production, including studies of data deluges, the co-production of digital technologies and academic work, and mundane use of digital tools.

Publications

Pham B-C, Davies S. Policy as infrastructure: Enacting artificial intelligence and making Europe. In Klimburg-Witjes N, Trauttmansdorff P, editors, Technopolitics and the Making of Europe: Infrastructures of Security. Routledge, Taylor & Francis. 2023. p. 125–140 Epub 2023.

Koesten L, Gregory K, Schuster R, Knoll C, Davies S, Möller T. What is the message? Perspectives on Visual Data Communication. 2023 Apr 12. Epub 2023 Apr 12. doi: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2304.10544

Davies S, Pham B-C. Luck and the ‘situations’ of research. Social Studies of Science. 2023 Apr;53(2):287-299. Epub 2022 Oct. doi: 10.1177/03063127221125438

Verstappen S, Davies S. Investigating scientific practice with ethnographic film. In EASA Media Anthropology Network E-Seminars. Vol. 69. 2022

Davies S. Atmospheres of science: Experiencing scientific mobility. Social Studies of Science. 2021 Apr 1;51(2):214-232. Epub 2020. doi: 10.1177/0306312720953520

Davies S. An Empirical and Conceptual Note on Science Communication’s Role in Society. Science Communication. 2021 Feb 1;43(1):116-133. Epub 2020 Nov 16. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1075547020971642

Davies S, Lindvig K. Assembling research integrity: negotiating a policy object in scientific governance. Critical Policy Studies. 2021;15(4):444-461. Epub 2021 Feb 1. doi: 10.1080/19460171.2021.1879660

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