Prof. Dr. Ulrike Felt accepts invitation as keynote speaker

2006-04-10 - Prof. Dr. Ulrike Felt, University of vienna, accepts invitation as keynote speaker. She will talk about concepts of knowledge.

Ulrike Felt is professor of social studies of science since 1999 and head of the department of social studies of science at the university of vienna.
After having finished her Ph.D. 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. 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 got her habilitation in Science Studies/Sociology of Sciences.
Over the years two broad research lines developed:

• issues in the field of science communication, public engagement with technoscience as well as governance and public participation (biomedicine and the life sciences have become her special focus here)
• topics in knowledge politics, embracing both the changing cultures of knowledge production but also how this gets translated into institutional policy such as university reforms, quality assess ment strategies etc.
  

In both areas gender perspectives have been integral part of her research preoccupations.

Ulrike Felt has wide experience in running nationally and internationally funded research projects in both areas and working with a broad spectrum of social science research methods. During the last years 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 and most recently at the Collegium Helveticum, ETH Zurich.

In order to offer students good conditions for going abroad, she became coordinator in a network of European universities (NECSTS) under the ERASMUS scheme in 1991 and the cooperation between the institutions is still working well.

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. Since July 2002 she is editor of the international peer-reviewed Journal Science, Technology, & Human Values (Journal of the Society for Social Studies of Science). Currently she also serves as expert in the Advisory Group of the European Commission for the "Science and Society" priority of the 6th framework programme and is leading together with Brian Wynne the expert group on Science and Governance. As member of the steering committee Ulrike Felt is also involved in preparing the 2006 Euroscience Open Forum.