Sociology, in particular Workplace Studies
Department of Social Sciences
To add to the study of technology in use, we investigate professional and skilful practices. Rather than presupposing a comprehensive perspective covering (expert) design and (lay) uses, we explore a more particular setting, characterised by technology-in-use out of area. Instead of studying technology inside, that is within highly controlled environments (such as factories or laboratories), we follow technicians and their practices of field service while navigating public spaces or customers' places. We scrutinise these workplaces as they are demanding (and sometimes creative) in terms of cooperation. Thick descriptions of these situated encounters may considerably improve our understanding of cooperation and how it evolves.
Research profile
The professorship conducts, invites and supports social research that steps back from and questions a priori dichotomies of Modernity versus ‘the rest’. In order to carve out and exemplify this claim, the case of technology offers a privileged site of inquiry. If technology is not regarded as self-explanatory, that is committed to some (thoroughly modern) idea of progress, its uses can be situated, and its social prerequisites and consequence can be empirically observed. Following this line of thought, the professorship favours the practice of ethnographic description. Often, these ethnographic descriptions contrast the taken-for-granted accounts of the ordinary in modern life and even the conceptual foundations of the social sciences. With a thematic focus on mobility and transport, the professorship has established valuable and long-term interdisciplinary research collaborations.
Research focus
- Technology in and out of use
- Mobility and its crises
- Conceptual and methodological enquiries at the crossroads of Sociology and Science and Technology Studies
