Univ.-Prof. Sarah Davies, BSc MSc PhD

Universitätsprofessorin

eMail: sarah.davies@univie.ac.at

Biography

I am Professor of Technosciences, Materiality, & Digital Cultures at the Department of Science and Technology Studies. My 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. I have written about hackers and hackerspaces, how scientists experience the conditions of contemporary academia, and science communication formats such as science festivals or museums.

My PhD (2008) was carried out at Imperial College London. Since then my career has been highly international: I have worked in the UK, US, Denmark (as a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellow, before becoming associate professor) and Norway. I have published a number of books, including Science Societies (2024, BUP), Exploring Science Communication (2020, SAGE, with Ulrike Felt) Hackerspaces (2017, Polity), and Science Communication: Culture, Identity, and Citizenship (2016, Palgrave, with Maja Horst). 

My inaugural lecture ('Knowing through digital practices; Or, How to be an academic’) was held on 7 December 2022. You can find the text and video at the following links: Video & Full text.

Current Research Interests

My current work focuses on how relationships between science, technology, and society are mediated through and shaped by digital tools, spaces, and technologies. Specifically, my group and I study the digital as material practice, in diverse sites where science and technology are created and negotiated. My work is thus fundamentally concerned with how technoscientific knowledge is created, communicated, and contested through digital tools, platforms, and technologies, and with the impacts that this is having on forms of life in different settings. It makes both theoretical and empirical contributions, with a focus on exploring diverse material contexts in which digital tools come to matter to knowledge production and dissemination.

More generally I am interested in:

  • The contemporary conditions of academic work and knowledge production;
  • Digitisation within scientific knowledge production, including the co-production of digital technologies and academic work and mundane use of digital tools;
  • 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.

Publications

Verstappen S, Davies S. Investigating scientific practice with ethnographic film. European Association of Social Anthropologists. 2022.

Davies S. Knowing through digital practices; Or, How to be an academic: Inaugural Lecture at the University of Vienna, 7 December 2022. Open Access-Publikation im Repositorium Phaidra. 2022. doi: https://doi.org/10.25365/phaidra.375

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

Davies S. Performing Science in Public: Science Communication and Scientific Identity. in Kastenhofer K, Molyneux-Hodgson S, Hrsg., Community and Identity in Contemporary Technosciences. Cham: Springer. 2021. S. 207-223. (Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, Band 31).

Davies S, Horst M. Science Communication as Culture: A Framework for Analysis. in Bucchi M, Trench B, Hrsg., Routledge Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology. London: Routledge. 2021. S. 182-197

Davies S, Franks S, Roche J, Schmidt AL, Wells R, Zollo F. The Landscape of European Science Communication. JCOM. 2021;20(3):1-9. A01. doi: 10.22323/2.20030201

Davies SR. Epistemic Living Spaces, International Mobility, and Local Variation in Scientific Practice. Minerva. 2020 Mär;58(1):97-114. Epub 2019 Sep 21. doi: 10.1007/s11024-019-09387-0

Tybjerg K, Whiteley L, Davies S. Object Biographies: The Life of a Hacked Gene Gun. in Felt U, Davies S, Hrsg., Exploring Science Communication: A Science and Technology Studies Approach. Los Angeles: Sage Publications Ltd. 2020. S. 69-87

Davies SR. An Ethics of the System: Talking to Scientists About Research Integrity. Science and Engineering Ethics. 2019;25(4):1235-1253. Epub 2018 Sep 24. doi: 10.1007/s11948-018-0064-y

Davies SR, Halpern M, Horst M, Kirby DA, Lewenstein B. Science stories as culture: experience, identity, narrative and emotion in public communication of science. JCOM. 2019;18(5):A01. doi: 10.22323/2.18050201

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