Locating & Timing Governance in STS and Universities III: Challenges in university knowledge making

Abstract

For generations universities have been institutions of higher education and research. Now they are expected to contribute to local and global economies by commercializing research and spurring innovation, while addressing grand social challenges like climate mitigation and social disparities. They also must engage successfully in mass higher education and outreach with a variety of publics. This means that universities now occupy a strategic place in re/shaping society by circulating research and knowledge through teaching and professional expertise. Meanwhile universities have become subject to increased auditing practices and austerity policies, locally and globally. Universities turn to experts in branding and commodification for strategies in defining and representing their work as successful. STS provides resources for understanding such dis/continuities in the making and circulation of knowledge while the study of universities in dynamic ecologies is vital to addressing unexamined assumptions in STS about the relationship between research, teaching, and society, as well as the governance of that relationship.

Chair

• Knut H Sørensen, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Individual Presentations

• Synergy and Interdisciplinarity in Extra-scientific Collaborations - Loet Leydesdorff, University of Amsterdam, ASCoR

• Relying on Relay: Norwegian biotechnology scientists struggling with ideas of convergence - Maria Bårdsen Hesjedal, Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture. NTNU; Heidrun Åm, Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU); Knut H Sørensen, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology

• “If I’m the First Author, I Don’t Care about the Rest...”: Junior Researchers Ascribing Worth to their Contributions - Vera Ulmer, Research Platform Responsible Research and Innovation in Academic Practice, University of Vienna

• Mapping and Diagnosing Mental Health in/and the UK University Sector - Leon Rocha, University of Lincoln; Felicity Callard, Birkbeck, University of London; Philip Garnett, University of York; Dimitra Kotouza, University of Lincoln

Session Organizers

• Knut H Sørensen, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology

• Sharon Traweek, UCLA