Professor of Science and Technology Studies

Head of the Department of Science and Technology Studies

Head of the research platform Responsible Research and Innovation in Academic Practice

Consultation hour: by arrangement via eMail!

T: +43 1 4277 49611    (secr. -49601)

eMail: ulrike.felt@univie.ac.at

Biography

Ulrike Felt is Professor of Science and Technology Studies since 1999, and Head of the Departement of Science and Technology Studies and of the research platform Responsible Research and Innovation in Academic Practice

After having finished her PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Vienna in 1983, she worked for nearly five years in an interdisciplinary research team of science historians at the European Center for High Energy Physics (CERN) in Geneva studying social, political and scientific aspects in the foundation period of this first big European research institution. During this period her research interests moved into the field of science and technology studies (STS). After her stay at CERN she returned to Vienna, where she took up a position at the newly founded Institute for Philosophy of Science and Social Studies of Science headed by Helga Nowotny. In 1997 she received her habilitation in Science Studies/Sociology of Sciences.

Ulrike Felt has wide experience in running nationally and internationally funded research projects working with a broad spectrum of social science research methods. She has been visiting professor in a number of institutions, among them at GERSULP/Université Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg), at the Centre Interuniversitaire pour la Recherche en Science et Technologie, Universite du Québec à Montréal, at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris, at the Collegium Helveticum, ETH Zurich and at the STS group at Harvard. She has served as member of the council of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) from 1995 until 1999, and of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) from 2002 to 2004. From July 2002 to June 2007 she was editor of the international peer-reviewed Journal Science, Technology, & Human Values (Journal of the Society for Social Studies of Science). Most recently she has also engaged in setting up an interdisciplinary Masterprogramme "Science - Technology - Society" (taught in English language) at the University of Vienna.

Finally she engaged into policy advise both nationally and at the European level, e.g. as expert in the Advisory Group of the European Commission for the Science and Society priority of the 6th framework programme (2003-2006); as member of the European Research Advisory Board (EURAB; 2006/07); as rapporteur of the expert group Science and Governance (download the report as pdf) and most recently for the European Science Foundation (Science Policy Briefing: Science in Society - Caring for our Futures in Turbulent Times).

Main Research Interests

Over the years several interrelated lines of research have developed:

• knowledge relations: investigate how in contemporary societies relations are built through/on knowledge and how knowledge emerges through specific kinds of relational networks;
• science, technology and democracy: public engagement with technoscience as well as governance and public participation (biomedicine and the life sciences as well nanotechnologies are special foci), science communication;
• the coproduction of temporealities and technoscientific issues whith particular focus on the growing role of future as central 'object' in shaping science and society relations;
• topics in knowledge politics, embracing both the changing cultures of knowing and living in research and their intertwinedness with institutional policy such as university reforms, quality assessment strategies, excellence intitiatives, etc.