Du 22/08/2016 Au 26/08/2016

WTMC Summer School: Time and STS 22-26 August 2016 | The Netherlands

WTMC Summer School: Time and STS 22-26 August 2016 | The Netherlands

It is the “thing” that organizes everything we do: time. We have deadlines to meet. We have to allot working hours to a particular task. We have our ‘own time’, which we spend on tasks of our choice, which we prioritise in this special moment. Time is said to be lost when waiting in queues or playing stupid games on our smartphones. A bad movie or a lousy book are regarded as ‘wastes of time’, just as much as weighing up all the options when it comes to making choices. We ponder over how much time we can/should reasonably spend on a particular activity. There is biorhythm, PhD-time, clock time, quality time, and time to divide between work and private lives. Many of us always feel short of time. Nine out of ten researchers who acquire funds, will use it to ‘buy extra research time’, and the last one buys expensive equipment that saves them time.

Time is highly elusive, and it has not been a very prominent topic of interest within STS. STS has produced many analyses and conceptualisations that introduce reflections on time (e.g., in laboratory studies) or even theorise time in some form. In recent years, for example, particular attention has focused on how we imagine, perform, anticipate and live by techno-scientific futures. But only rarely has time been addressed in more systematic ways, to become the thing to-be-explained, the centre of our analysis. How can ‘time’ be imagined as constitutive of what we make known and how we know it? In which ways are the multiple temporal infrastructures in science, technology and society produced and sustained; and how do they get entangled?

With Ulrike Felt, from the University of Vienna, we will spend a fascinating 2016 WTMC Summer School thinking through time. We will investigate how time has been conceptualised throughout modern thought in general, and more specifically how time can be an interesting object of study as well as a key analytical concept for STS research. How does time organise practices and ontologies? How are ‘progress’, ‘change’, and ‘trajectories’ key to our analyses? What does it mean to ‘own’ time, and what is needed for that? How is time connected to our bodies and how they are known and owned (by us, by others), and to our material reality, to our temporal and spatial finitude? Where are the multiple temporal infrastructures in science, technology and society produced and sustained; and how do they get entangled? How might power be exercised through the generation of specific temporalities? How do pasts (our memory practices) and futures (our practices of anticipation) bring influence to bear on the present? These questions will be guiding our discussions and activities.

Ulrike Felt is Professor of Science and Technology Studies and currently Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on changing research cultures, governance and public participation in techno-scientific democracies as well as the role of temporal structures and future in these developments. She has been guest professor at numerous universities and has been active in policy advice on European and national levels. From 2002 to 2007 she was editor-in-chief of Science, Technology, & Human Values. She is lead editor of the 4th edition of the Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (The MIT Press, due to be published later this year).

Confirmed guest lecturers include Marli Huijer and Peter Peters.

The Summer School is aimed at PhD candidates who are in the first phase of writing their doctoral dissertation. Preparation for the Summer School is estimated at 80 hours in total. The Summer School is credited with 5 ECTS. The programme continues into the evening (not on Friday).

PhD students who are enrolled in the WTMC educational programme are only charged € 10 per day for meals. For external PhD students, a participation fee of € 1130 (€ 1060 for members of EASST) is charged, which includes lodging and meals.

Accommodation will be provided for and is included in the fee.

Venue:
The Summer School takes place in convent Soeterbeeck, Ravenstein (near Nijmegen) in The Netherlands.

The registration form for this summer school is available online.
Please register by 31 May 2016.

Contacts :
For practical questions related to the summer school, please contact :

For content-related questions, contact the coordinators:
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