Summer School 2013 "Situating Media" - Participants
Judith Willkomm (Siegen)
Shaping Scientific Practices in Bioacoustics. A Field Study on Field Studies
In bioacoustics research – a discipline which analyses the sounds of animals and their auditory detection – the use of media technology is part of the daily scientific practice. Based on ethnographic and historical studies in biology the presentation spotlights the mutual influence between researchers, field of research, technical equipment and the subject of research: the animals. Therefore a media theoretical perspective will be connected with the focus on theory of social practice in Science and Technology Studies. How human observation and non-human data collection and the mutual adaptation and shaping processes of technology and researchers during the field work interplays and forms the scientific practice can be explored in this way.
In addition, Judith Willkomm develops an empirical approach to the analysis of auditory forms of knowledge within the scientific landscape. She particularly attends to the question about the significance of acoustic recording devices – especially in field research – and how this technically collected data relates to the auditory observations of the researchers in the field.
Judith Willkomm, M.A. (Magistra Artium = German M.A. equivalent), studied European Ethnology (comparable to cultural anthropology) and Media Studies at the Humboldt-University in Berlin and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the postgraduate program Locating Media at the University of Siegen. Her doctoral thesis explores the upcoming influence of media technology in field science considering the example of Bioacoustics.
Her main research interests are ethnographic methods combined with media theory and theory of social practice, history of science, and media philosophy.
willkomm@locatingmedia.uni-siegen.de
Recent Publications
2013: “Die Technik gibt den Ton an: Zur auditiven Medienkultur der Bioakustik,” in: Axel Volmar, Jens Schröter (ed.),
Auditive Medienkulturen. Techniken des Hörens und Praktiken der Klanggestaltung, Bielefeld: transcript, 393–417.
2009: “Sensing the Street. Eine sinnliche Ethnographie der Großstadt” (with Maria Elisabeth Hiebsch and Fritz Schlüter), in: Sandra Maria Geschke (ed.), Straße als kultureller Aktionsraum. Interdisziplinäre Betrachtungen des Straßenraumes an der Schnittstelle zwischen Theorie und Praxis, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 31–57.
2008: “Vorwort” and “Begriffliche Drehscheibe,” in: Alex Arteaga, Wolfgang Knapp und Rolf Lindner (ed.), Sinnliche Dokumentation einer ethnographisch-künstlerischen Stadtforschung. (Sensing the Street)3, Berlin: Verlag der Universität der Künste Berlin (www.sensingthestreet.de).