Our Projects
Science and technology are central elements of modern societies. They have also become key actors in and topics of national and international policy. The professorship of Science and Technology Policy explores the multiple relationships between science, technology, society and policy that emerge in our increasingly technoscientific societies.
People (working on the project at the STS Department): Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller, Dr. Georgia Samaras, Mary Jones, M.A.
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller, Dr. Georgia Samaras (Ko-Leitung / co-leader)
Period: 2024-2027
Project type: Consortium Project Third-party funded Project
Funding Institution: Bavarian State Ministry for Science and Art
Description: Das Projekt erforscht den wissenschaftlichen und gesellschaftlichen Diskurs zu den langfristigen gesundheitlichen Auswirkungen von negativen Kindheitserfahrungen. Insbesondere untersuchen wir, wie sich diese Diskurse entwickeln und Konzeptionen von Familie und Verantwortung beeinflussen.
43 % der Bevölkerung Deutschlands erleben Traumata in ihrer Kindheit. Wissenschaftliche Studien postulieren einen Zusammenhang zwischen der Anzahl bestimmter negativer Kindheitserfahrungen, wie etwa sexuellem Missbrauch oder Drogenmissbrauch im Haushalt, und psychischen sowie physischen Erkrankungen im Lebensverlauf – ein Thema, das in den letzten Jahren verstärkt Gegenstand biomedizinischer Forschung ist. In jüngerer Zeit wurde die Epigenetik als möglicher Mechanismus für die Einschreibung solcher Erfahrungen in molekulare Strukturen vorgeschlagen.
Mit einem Mix aus sozialwissenschaftlichen Methoden untersuchen wir, wie Familie im Diskurs über die gesundheitlichen Folgen negativer Kindheitserfahrungen konzeptualisiert und positioniert wird und welche Vorstellungen von familialer Verantwortung für die Gesundheit entstehen. Unsere Forschung analysiert in diesem Kontext auch, welche diskriminierenden Narrative aus den Diskursen entstehen. Diese können nicht nur gegen Betroffene wirken, sondern auch Verantwortung an Gruppen wie Mütter überhöht zuschreiben. Durch einen partizipativen Workshop, der Eltern, Forschende, und andere Stakeholder zusammenbringt, wollen wir schließlich eine Intervention in den Diskurs setzen und das Verhältnis von Familie, Kindheitserfahrungen und Gesundheit, besonders mit Blick auf Fragen von sozialer Gerechtigkeit, kritisch durchleuchten und neu erfassen.
Other: https://forfamily-forschung-bayern.de/projekte/negative-kindheitserfahrungen/
As part of the TUM Innovation Network for Neurotechnology in Mental Health (NEUROTECH), we follow an innovative embedded ethics and social science approach that we recently developed in a collaborative effort and have started to implement at TUM. This approach is based on the interdisciplinary integration of ethics and social science researchers into the basic science, clinical and technology development aspects of the research processes of neurotechnology. Based on this integration, we accompany and analyze the research and development processes of the NEUROTECH network, for example when building novel AI-driven therapeutic interventions. We then feed back our analysis of potential ethical and social issues – ranging, e.g., from algorithmic bias to data protection aspects to impacts on patient autonomy and the future doctor-patient-relationship – into development processes in real-time in order to identify, reflect on and address any ethical and social issues as they arise.
To complement this analysis, we work in participatory ways with relevant stakeholders in society that are affected by the technology and its implementation, such as patients and patient organizations, doctors and nursing staff. We engage with these stakeholders, explore their perspectives and expertises and make this knowledge available to the NEUROTECH network so that it can be considered in research processes and the development of technologies as well as their clinical implementation
Partner
Prof. Dr. Simon Jacob (Translational Neurotechnology) – Coordinator
Prof. Dr. Alena Buyx (Ethics in Medicine and Health Technologies)
Prof. Dr. Julijana Gjorgjieva (Computational Neurosciences)
Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller (Science & Technology Policy)
Prof. Dr. Markus Ploner (Human Pain Research)
Prof. Dr. Josef Priller (Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy)
Prof. Dr. Daniel Rückert (Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Medicine)
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Wolfrum (Neuroelectronics)
People (working on the project at the STS Department): Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller, Anja Kathrin Rueß, M.Sc.
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. Simon Jacob (Coordinator); Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller (PI “Embedded ethics and social science for responsible neurotechnology”); Prof. Dr. Alena Buyx (Co-PI “Embedded ethics and social science for responsible neurotechnology”)
Period: 2022-2026
Project type: TUM Innovation Networks
Funding institution: TUM Innovation Networks
People (working on the project at the STS Department): Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller, Prof. Dr. Alena Buyx, Svenja Breuer, Theresa Willem.
As artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) continue to advance and permeate healthcare and medicine, it is crucial that we consider the ethical and social implications of these developments. From issues of bias and discrimination, privacy and autonomy, transparency and accountability, to questions of human-machine interaction, the ethical and social issues surrounding medical AI are complex and multifaceted and need to be addressed carefully and responsibly.
MedAIcine addresses key challenges and tensions regarding the responsible design and use of AI in medical imaging. Applying an embedded ethics and social science approach, the project team of science and technology studies (STS), philosophy, and ethics researchers investigates social and ethical aspects emerging in medical AI research and implementation empirically. We conduct case studies of ML in radiology, dermatology, and endoscopy, using a process of long-term integrated collaboration with technological and medical researchers and practitioners. Our research foci include issues of trust, privacy, transparency, explainability, and responsibility in relation to medical AI technologies, physician and patient perceptions of these technologies, and issues of bias and equity in data collection and analysis.
MedAIcine is the first pilot project of the Center for Responsible AI Technologies, founded by the University of Augsburg (UNIA), the Munich School of Philosophy (HFPH) and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in February 2022. The Center pursues the goal of bringing consideration of philosophical, ethical, and social science questions and problems into the entire process of AI technology development and implementation.
Projektleitung: Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller, Prof. Dr. Alena Buyx
Zeitraum: 10/2022-09/2025
Projekttyp: Third-party funded Project
Fördergeber: Center for Responsible AI Technologies
Project Team: Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller (PI), Dr. Lucas Brunet, Kay Felder (previously)
Academic excellence has become a key notion within science policy discourses in recent years. Many profound reforms in the European academic research landscape have been argued as necessary in order to improve the scientific excellence of different research systems. At the same time, the concrete meaning of the term “excellence” often remains opaque and only becomes tangible in the situated contexts of its use. In this project, we investigate how the notion of excellence is operationalized at an important site of academic evaluation and selection, that is in European funding programs for early- and mid-career researchers. The project takes an actor-centered approach and uses reflexive peer-to-peer interviews to explore the reviewers’ perceptions and understandings of scientific excellence in different research funding contexts.To this end, the project draws on concepts and methods from both Science & Technology Studies (STS) and Valuation Studies, which understand notions of value and worth as products of complex social processes and negotiations, not as prefigured categories that can readily be applied in a social situation. Consequently, we understand peer reviewers as actors that make complex decisions about the value of research and researchers against the backdrop of an ever-changing scientific system within which they have to navigate potentially conflicting ideas about what counts as excellent science. Through its exploration of reviewers’ perceptions of excellence, the project aims to contribute to an empirically grounded discussion in science and in science policy about the norms, values, and potential tensions that characterize evaluation processes for research funding in the context of an increasingly competitive research system.
The project is supported by the STS Lab Engineering Responsibility and the TUM Gender & Diversity Incentive Fund. Furthermore, the project is associated with the DFG research group 2448 “Practicing Evidence – Evidencing Practice”.
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller
Project type: Array
Funding institution: STS Labor Engineering Responsibility, TUM Gender & Diversity Incentive Fund
People (working on the project at the STS Department): Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller, Michael Schönwolff, M.A.
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. Helena Bilandzic, Prof. Dr. Sascha Dickel, Prof. Dr. Dr. Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio, Prof. Dr. Susanne Kinnebrock, Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller, Karolin Kornehl, Angelika Laumer, Markus Schug
Period: 2021-2023
Project type: DFG-Forschungsgruppe „Practicing Evidence – Evidencing Practice“
Funding Institution: DFG
Description: The project aims to investigate how the production, communication, and social negotiation of scientific evidence about COVID-19 is taking place under the conditions of the corona crisis. The rapid spread of COVID-19 and the associated pressure to act and make decisions increase the need for trustworthy scientific knowledge. However at the same, dissenting experts, the repeated adjustment of figures, statistics and recommendations, and the intensive “mediaization”of divergent opinions and conflict all foster scepticism towards authorized sources of evidence. Against this background, this interdisciplinary project aims to investigate the de- and restabilization of scientific evidence in the corona crisis. We investigate four central arenas where evidence about COVID-19 is being negotiated (scientific research, medical practice, science journalism, and social media); thereby combining the expertise of four research fields (science and technology studies, medical ethics, communication science, and sociology). This allows us to examine the evidence dynamics in these arenas and, most importantly, their interactions in the de- and restabilization of evidence. Furthermore, the integration of the project into the DFG Research Group “Practicing Evidence – Evidencing Practice” allows us to investigate what might be novel about the production, communication, and social negotiation of evidence during the corona crisis, and whether and how continuities with other conflicts about evidence in contemporary knowledge societies can be established.
Women are disproportionately affected by a variety of drug use-related harms and remain under-represented in addiction treatment and drug support services. In response to these challenges, state of the art research and policy debates have emphasized the urgent need to incorporate gender-specific needs into the design and delivery of drug services. Building on this imperative, the DAAD project seeks to shed much needed light on the factors influencing the development and implementation of ‘gender-responsive’ drug services. To this end, Dr Aysel Sultan from the STS department at TUM will spend 1 month at the Eastern Health Clinical School of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia which will be followed by an exchange visit from Dr Tristan Duncan to the STS department. The fellows will collaboratively design and undertake a qualitative study on how drug services incorporate gender and gender-responsiveness into service delivery. This exchange is funded by the German Academic Exchange Program (DAAD) and Veski in Victoria.
The case study of the project is a German drug consumption room ragazza e.V. located in the city of Hamburg. As one of two ‘women-only’ drug consumption rooms services globally (second one being in Vancouver), the site provides a unique and heretofore unexamined example of gender-responsive policy in practice. The case study will be complemented with visits to drug consumption rooms in Berlin and Melbourne, conversations with local experts in each country and examination of local policy briefs.
This project will contribute new knowledge on the development and implementation of gender-responsive drug services, including insights into the processes, challenges, and dynamics that shape program operations and sustainability. As policy makers continue to grapple with gendered inequalities in drug service access, this knowledge can play a critical role in supporting informed drug policy decision-making and practice in Australia and abroad. The project will also act as a pilot study that will form the basis of a grant application involving a comparative analysis of German and Australian drug consumption room stakeholders’ understandings of gender-responsive design
Project leader(s): Aysel Sultan, Tristan Duncan
Period: 01.08.2023-01.10.2023
Project type: Third-party funded Project
Funding institution: DAAD, Veski and Monash University
People (working on the project at the STS Department): Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller, Dr. Aysel Sultan
The Research Cultures in Germany project investigated how researchers in various fields and disciplines perceive working and living in Germany and what opportunities and challenges they identify for local research cultures in Germany. The aim was to develop a description of the current conditions from which the Foundation could derive ideas for its funding activities and for potential improvements for the future of research cultures in Germany.
Within the context of this project, we understand research cultures as multidimensional: they are composed of epistemic, social, organizational, and societal dimensions. We therefore also speak of research cultures in the plural: while there are frameworks at the societal and organizational level that apply to all research fields in Germany. Moreover, specific research fields have their own epistemic and social practices and norms against which they interpret and negotiate organizational and societal frameworks.
In Germany, working and living conditions with regards to research careers have gained attention in recent years, especially along the protest movements from untenured staff and early career researchers that became a popular debate under the #IchbinHanna and #IchbinReyhan (Bahr et al., 2022). This movement has pointed to precarious employment conditions and accompanying restrictions to quality, creativity, productivity, and also diversity in German research landscape. These protest movements, the evaluation of the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz 2022, or attempts by some universities to establish new forms of employment, especially for postdoctoral researchers, have led to an intensive discussion of the situation of untenured staff. What is largely missing, however, are debates and analyses that take a systemic perspective and, in this sense, look at research cultures in Germany from the perspective of different actors and their interactions. This project aimed to emphasize some of the field-specific differences in sociology, environmental humanities, artificial intelligence and synthetic biology to highlight the interrelation of different human and nonhuman actors (such as institutional structures, legal conditions) in navigating the challenges of everyday research life.
Our findings suggest that some problem areas can be addressed directly through changes in research funding. In many cases, we see the Volkswagen Foundation as an actor that could initiate important discourses in the German science system and thus achieve step-by-step changes together with other actors.
Partner
Joanneum Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH
DHZW (German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies)
EvaConsult
Project leader(s): Michael Ploder, Joanneum Research, Graz/Austria
Period: Jan-Dec 2022
Project type: Consortium Project Third-party funded Project
Funding institution: Volkswagen Foundation
Subproject 8 focuses on evidence practices in the evaluation of scientific quality for research funding purposes. In the contemporary scientific system, high scientific quality – often framed as excellence – has become both a key goal of scientific and political activities and the center of many controversies How, for example, can excellence be defined, measured, compared and made evident?
In phase 1 of the research unit, the associated project AP2 studied how reviewers for the European Research Council (ERC) perceive and navigate scientific evaluation process at the ERC and which norms and values guide their evidence practices and decision-making processes. AP2 showed a significant tension between reviewers, on the one hand, promoting a vision of excellence as a deeply heterogenous and context-dependent quality of scientific work when they discussed excellence in the abstract during the interview. On the other hand, they recounted a focus on standardized performance indicators when they described how they actually evaluated proposals and CVs during the ERC assessment process.
In the subproject TP8 for phase 2 of the research unit, we are now shifting our focus of study to the evidence practices scientists engage in when they prepare applications for the ERC. We will conduct this analysis against the backdrop of broader dynamics and transformations in contemporary science that lead to processes which de- and restabilize notions of scientific quality – processes, for which the creation of the ERC itself is indicative.
Reviewers and applicants alike need to face the challenge of how to make the quality of research ideas and scientific biographies evident. Subproject 8 will analyze which practices researchers engage in when they attempt to generate evidence for the excellence of their proposals and CVs for review at the ERC. It will further explore which epistemic, normative and institutional implications these practices might have. The project will answer these questions by means of qualitive social science inquiry. We will conduct interviews with researchers and with university personnel who aim to support their application processes; analyze application documents; and conduct participatory observations at coaching events for ERC applicants. The subproject will thus study how researchers generate evidence for the quality of their work and their scholarly biographies and thereby create and rehearse new criteria and standards for what counts as high-quality and thus credible science. Given the central role that scientific knowledge plays in evidence practices in a range of social arenas, we believe that such a reflexive analysis of evidence practices in science, which crucially regulate the distribution of resources and academic esteem, is an important element of the unit’s research program.
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller
Period: 12.2020 - 09.2023
Project type: Drittmittelprojekt / Third-party funded Project
Funding institution: DFG
The integration of embodied Artificial Intelligence (AI) into healthcare and society is expected to deliver major benefits in future decades. However, innovations such as AI operating robots, AI prosthetics, care- or at some point even micro- and nanorobots will come with a number of ethical, social, political and legal challenges, among them ground-breaking shifts in the work cultures and expertise of medical professionals. These challenges arising from novel divisions of labour between humans and machines need to be addressed proactively if embodied AI is to be implemented into medicine and society successfully and responsibly. While overarching principles such as those by the European High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, or standards such as the ISO for personal care robots have been developed, concrete and fine-grained frameworks for a responsible integration of embodied AI products into healthcare practices and work cultures are still largely missing. There are also no best practice models available for the interdisciplinary development of human-machine applications in biomedicine that take ethical, social and regulatory issues into account.
RR-AI therefore seeks to 1) empirically study the social and ethical and legal dimensions of two novel AI-based technologies – a service robot named GARMI, and a smart arm exoprosthesis – as they are being developed and implemented in healthcare practice; 2) develop a practical toolbox for future interdisciplinary AI innovation, as well as concrete standards and recommendations for responsible integration of embodied AI into healthcare work practice and training; 3) experimentally test these tools and recommendations through interdisciplinary co-creation and work-place integration of embodied AI applications. The project thus takes an innovative “embedded” approach, whereby ethical, social, legal and political analyses constitute integral elements of an AI product design process as well as its work place integration. Project results will be discussed with stakeholders, pilot-tested and disseminated widely.
The project is part of the transdisciplinary consortium “Digitalization” (https://www.bidt.digital/bidt-foerdert-neun-forschungsprojekte-zur-digitalisierung/), which explores questions of the digital transition in economy and work, politics and society, as well as media and public communication. The consortium is funded by the Bavarian Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt) of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Within the consortium, the project “Responsible Robotics” is part of the initiative “economy and work”.
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller
Period: 04.2020 - 06.2023
Projekttyp: Verbundprojekt
Funding institution: Bayerisches Forschungsinstitut für digitale Transformation (bidt)
- PI: Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller
- Researcher: Julia Feiler
In science and in society, the CRISPR-Cas9 system is currently discussed as revolutionary new genetic technology. The novel technique promises more precise and cost-efficient ways of genetically “editing” the genomes of a wide variety of species. Potential applications range from the drastically simplified production of genetically modified crops and livestock to the development of new gene therapies. In the agricultural sector, the new technical possibilities have raised hope that they will enable more resource-efficient and sustainable forms of agriculture as they could complement existing traditional breeding techniques. At the same time, the possibility of gene editing raises a range of ethical, political and social concerns and has stirred up debates about if, how and when these new technologies should be used.
As part of the transdisciplinary research consortium FORTiGe, which is funded by the Bavarian research association: forschungsstiftung.de/Projekte/Details/Forschungsverbund-Tiergesundheit-durch-Genomik-FORTiGe.html) we examine public and scientific perceptions and imaginaries of gene editing technologies. We focus particularly on potential applications of gene editing for livestock breeding in the specific Bavarian context. Using qualitative social science research methods such as interviews and scenario-based focus group discussions, we examine how different stakeholders, including farmers and breeders, perceive the opportunities and challenges of gene editing. We thereby facilitate inclusive deliberation about what the responsible development of gene editing technologies could look like in the specific national and local context of Bavaria.
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller
Period: 09.2018 – 05.2021
Project type: ["Verbundprojekt \/ Consortium Project"]
Funding institution: Bayerische Forschungsstiftung
- PI: Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller
- Researcher: Dr. Sarah Schönbauer
Plastics and specifically microplastics in the environment are increasingly receiving public attention. Headlines such as “Dangerous mini-poison-bomb” (Focus online, 2012) or “Underestimated Danger – Plastic particles contaminate food” (Spiegel online, 2013) point to an increasing public discourse about microplastics as a potential environmental and health risk. Increasing public attention is going hand in hand with a surge in scientific and political engagement with the topic.
The project “Plastics – Publics – Politics” analyses how different stakeholders perceive and understand microplastics and how it is discussed and rendered potentially problematic in different social arenas, such as the media, civil society, science or policy. Thereby, the project generates a better understanding of the societal contexts in which current efforts to change the use and governance of plastics unfold.
The study employs qualitative social science methods, such as a media analysis of the representation of microplastics in daily and weekly German newspapers, interviews with scientists and citizen activists, and focus groups with citizens. Furthermore, the project fosters inter- and transdisciplinary dialogue between stakeholders from science, politics, civil society and industry, for which the project team collaborates with the German Federal Environment Office.
The project is part of the transdisciplinary consortium “SubµTrack: Tracking of (Sub)Microplastics of different identities” (https://www.wasser.tum.de/submuetrack/startseite/), which explores the toxicological, ecological as well as the social and political aspects of micro and nano plastic particles in the environment,. The consortium is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of a BMBF-funded initiative “Plastic in the Environment“ (https://bmbf-plastik.de/en). The project “Plastics – Publics – Politics” receives additional funds from the MCTS Lab “Engineering Responsibility”.
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller
Period: 03.2018 – 08.2021
Project type: ["consortium"]
Funding institution: BMBF
Project team: Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller (PI), Dr. Michael Penkler, Sophia Rossmann, M.A., Georgia Samaras, M.A.
Epigenetics explores changes in gene expression that do not result from gene mutation, but from chemical modifications on the DNA. In recent years, such epigenetic modifications have been found to respond to numerous stimuli from the environment – such as toxins, nutrition, trauma or stress – giving rise to the field of ‘environmental epigenetics’. By proposing mechanisms for how such factors can alter gene expression, environmental epigenetics offers important novel perspectives for understanding body, health and illness as ‘biosocial’. However, it is yet unclear what the specific impact of such perspectives might be in different research areas within the life sciences and how approaches from environmental epigenetics might affect understandings of body, health and illness differently in different fields.
This project thus takes a comparative approach and studies how approaches from environmental epigenetics are adopted and adapted in three research fields of great relevance for public health: nutritional epidemiology, environmental toxicology, and the pathophysiology of mood & anxiety. To this end, the project team uses qualitative social science research methods such as interviews, ethnographic observation and document analysis. By taking this comparative approach the project design gives room to the possibility that environmental epigenetics might constitute different “epistemic things” (Rheinberger, 1997) in different research contexts with different social and political implications. This approach builds on insights from Science & Technology Studies that emphasize the situated character of knowledge production (Haraway, 1988; Knorr-Cetina, 1999) and the need for context-sensitive research approaches (Jasanoff, 2004). Beyond contributing to social science debates the project will actively promote constructive interdisciplinary dialogue between social and life sciences.
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller
Period:10.2018 – 09.2021
Project type: ["Drittmittelprojekt \/ Third-party funded Project"]
Funding institution: DFG
Evidence is continually growing in importance for political, societal, and individual decisions, despite increasing talk of an impending ‘post-factual era’. Evidence is based on data that is collected in a scientific fashion, but is also a social phenomenon. How and by whom is it created and used, and what impact does this have? These are the main questions that our Research Group has set out to investigate. Since evidence is an issue that concern many different scientific disciplines, our group is interdisciplinary in outlook. Our six sub-projects include scholars from the subject areas History of Technology, Sociology of Science/MCTS, History and Ethics of Medicine, Marketing and Consumer Research, as well as History of Science and Technology.
- Speaker: Prof. Dr. Karin Zachmann (until 2024), Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller (from 2024)
- Co-Speaker: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Sascha Dickel (Sociology of Science, University of Mainz)
- Coordinator: Dr. Olga Sparschuh
Subprojects
subProject 4: The Role of Moralization in the Interpretation and Use of Nutritional Evidence
2020 – 2023
This project examines the evidence practices of consumers in the field of nutrition. Nutrition is an evolutionary and culturally engrained practice that has only recently – approximately the last hundred years – been strengthened, confronted or changed by findings from the nutritional sciences. The results of the first research phase show that evidence – understood as meaningful and socially accepted knowledge and guiding consumer action – is not only based on scientific knowledge, but is influenced by heuristics and values. This is especially the case when scientific knowledge is fragile and in conflict with intuitive judgments of right or wrong and good or bad.
- Prof. Dr. Jutta Roosen
- Edoardo Maria Pelli
subproject 5: The Risk Industry. Evidence for safety as a new field of research and enterprise (1960s to 1980s)
08.2020 – 08.2023
This project investigates changing evidence practices for technical safety in Germany during a key period from the 1950s to the 1980s. Whereas the first project phase focused mainly on the two technological domains of nuclear and automotive technology, the second phase will concentrate on the emergence of what we call the risk industry. We use this term to describe the new field of academic as well as commercial activity arising since the late 1960s, which used the concept of risk as a central category in order to produce and apply knowledge on and evidence for (technical) safety – in an engineering, political-discursive, as well as entrepreneurial sense. The project aims to describe the historical development of this new field of knowledge in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and to analyze its role in the establishment of a new evidence regime for technical safety since the 1970s.
- Prof. Dr. Karin Zachmann
- Dr. Stefan Esselborn
Subproject 8: Obviously Excellent? Evidence practices in preparing scientific research and biographies when applying for ERC starting and consolidator grants
In the contemporary scientific system, high scientific quality – often framed as excellence – has become both a key goal of scientific and political activities and the center of many controversies How, for example, can excellence be defined, measured, compared and made evident? Subproject 8 focuses on evidence practices in the evaluation of scientific quality for research funding purposes
- Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller
- Dr. Mallory James
Project leader(s): Prof. Dr. Karin Zachmann
Period: 13.12.2016 – 30.09.2023
Project type: Verbundprojekt / Consortium Project
Funding institution: DFG
Co-creation—the practice of bringing together diverse actors in a joint innovation activity to mutual benefit— has emerged as a widely desired key resource in current attempts to enhance innovation processes and outcomes. The European Research Consortium SCALINGS explores the avenues and limits for the wider dissemination and use of co-creation practices across Europe.
Through a multi-sited, embedded, and comparative experimental research design, SCALINGS studies the unique implementations and outcomes of three co-creation instruments: innovation procurement, living labs, and co-creation facilities. The consortium focuses on two technology domains (robotics and urban energy systems) across 10 partner countries. SCALINGS aims to strengthen opportunities for best practice transfer and a socially robust upscaling of co-creation, while improving our understanding of how co-creation practices relate to the social, cultural, economic, and institutional environments in which they are implemented. SCALINGS is an interdisciplinary project that brings together social scientists, engineers, policy-makers, and industry partners from all over Europe.
The project SCALINGS is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme within the specific objective Science with and for Society of Horizon 2020. This objective is to build effective cooperation between science and society, to recruit new talent for science and to pair scientific excellence with social awareness and responsibility.
Partner
- TUM (DE) – Technical University of Munich
- TU/e (NL) – Eindhoven University of Technology
- DTU (DK) – Technical University of Denmark
- EPFL (CH) – École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
- ARMINES/MINES ParisTech (FR) – Association pour la Recherche et le Développement des Méthodes et Processus Industriels / École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris
- ESADE (ES) – Fundación ESADE
- BOKU (AT) – Universität für Bodenkultur Wien
- UEW (PL) – Wrocław University of Economics
- UCL (UK) – University College London
- SIX (UK) – Social Innovation Exchange Ltd
Project leader(s): Prof. Sebastian Pfotenhauer
Period: 09.2018 – 09.2021
Project type: ["consortium"]
Funding institution: Horizon 2020
Are obesity and related metabolic disorders the result of a lack of self-discipline? This socially and medically widespread assumption is being challenged by medical research findings about the developmental origins of health and disease. For example, gestation and the first years of life are increasingly seen as formative for later-life disease risks. Experiences like over- or under-nutrition can condition the body in ways that increase or decrease one’s chances to develop obesity and metabolic disease in adulthood. In addition, some research findings even suggest that such ‘programming effects’ might not only influence one’s own health, but possibly also the health of one’s offspring. Disease risk might thus be inheritable across generations. Such findings have the potential to change how we think about and treat obesity and metabolic disease in health policy, medical practice, and everyday life. They highlight, for example, the significance of maternal nutrition for the future health of the unborn child – an assertion that can put parents under considerable pressure. The assumption that obesity and metabolic disease have developmental origins in early life can also lead to a closer examination of widespread stereotypes about obese people being ‘lazy’ or ‘unable to control themselves.’
In the social science research project “Articulating metabolic disease in a life course perspective,” I investigate how scientists study the developmental origins of metabolic health and disease in order to trace the social and political implications of this biomedical research field. I am observing the research practices of leading researchers in the field, conduct interviews and analyze current scientific publications in this area. I empirically investigate how different research approaches redefine obesity and its co-morbidities as life course diseases, and how this potentially changes notions of who is individually and collectively responsible for leading a healthy life. The research project thus aims to trace novel medical models of metabolic health and disease while they are still emerging in order to reflexively explore their wider implications and the possible challenges they might pose for society.
The project has been awarded an Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship of the FWF Austrian Research Fund.
Project leader(s): Dr. Michael Penkler
Period: 09.2018 – 09.2021
Project type: Array