In this webinar that took place on March 29, 2022, Peter Wehling presented the results of his guest residency at ISOE - Institute for Social-Ecological Research within the tdAcademy. During his residency, he examined the debate on transdisciplinarity from the perspective of Science and Technology Studies (STS). He analysed three exemplary cases of boundary-work of established, disciplinary science on transdisciplinary research. You will find more on his project in this article. Part of his results are published in issue 1/2022 of the journal GAIA.
The talk mainly addresses people who deal with transdisciplinarity on a theoretical level. For scientists who do transdisciplinary research themselves, Peter Wehling's sociological analysis of the relationship between established science and transdisciplinarity might be helpful in order to better understand the most common objections of established science towards transdisciplinarity. The lecture also encourages further thinking about transdisciplinarity as a research mode.
Peter Wehling is a lecturer in sociology at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. His research topics include: Science and Technology Studies, Sociology of Knowledge and Ignorance, Sociology of Biopolitics and Bioethics, Environmental Sociology, and Critical Social Theory.
Recent blog post in German: Umkämpfte Wissenschaftlichkeit oder: Warum das Etikett „Solutionismus“ nicht für transdisziplinäre Forschung passt. In: ISOE-Blog „Soziale Ökologie. Krise – Kritik – Gestaltung“.
Recent publication: Why Science Does Not Know. A Brief History of (the Notion of) Scientific Ignorance in the Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Centuries. Journal for the HIstory of Knowledge 2 (2021), no. 1. https://doi.org/10.5334/jhk.40
Contact: wehling@em.uni-frankfurt.de