Transformations of Science and Technology

On November 21, the Interdisciplinary Center for Science and Technology Studies (IZWT), to which RTG 2696 belongs, celebrated its 20th anniversary.

Current and former members marked the occasion by reflecting on past achievements, presenting ongoing projects, and looking ahead to future initiatives.

The BUW Press and Public Relations Department published an official press release.

More impressions from the celebration are available on the IZWT website.

Graduate students and early career researchers from all over the world and internationally renowned researchers came together at a summer school on the topic of “Narratives of Disruption and Continuity in Science, Technology, and Society” in the week from 1^st to 5^th of September 2025 in Wuppertal. The summer school was organized by the Research Training Group in collaboration with the Summer School Series in Higher Education Research and Science Studies (HERRS).

The invited senior scholars (among them two Mercator fellows of the GRK) provided the doctoral students with insights into the complex topic of how narratives are employed and present in scientific research by presenting the latest theories, methods and research designs. Coming from highly diverse fields, they demonstrated how discovery narratives informed the life sciences, gave insight into the narrative strategies employed by political parties of the far right on TikTok and shed light on the challenges involved in regulating online platforms in the age of large language models.

The program consisted of working groups (led by one of the invited senior scholars), keynotes (of the Mercator fellows) and presentations of the young scholars that were then commented by a senior scholar, followed by a discussion. The summer school thus provided early career researchers from the fields of history, philosophy and sociology of science with the opportunity to discuss their topics with leading researchers and develop new ideas for their own projects from an interdisciplinary perspective.

On May 26 and 27, young scientists gathered to discuss the material aspects of research and education. During these two days, participants from diverse backgrounds—including the history and sociology of science and technology, museum curation, and educational science—met at the Glanzstoffhaus. Jasmin Dirkes, Sabrina Engert, Lena Filzen and Jan Nicolay organized the workshop, which was funded by the GRK 2696.

Two days of intense discussions and interesting insights revealed how the production and transfer of knowledge is influenced by various material aspects, such as instruments, models, and printed documents. It was fruitful that the workshop mainly addressed early career scientists, giving them the opportunity to discuss their projects on a peer level. On the evening of the first day, participants had the opportunity to visit the Carl-Fuhlrott-Gymnasium’s astronomical observatory. There, they could experience cutting-edge technology, as well as self-built tools from young students. For more information, visit the observatory’s website: https://www.schuelerlabor-astronomie.de/.

For more Information on the content and participants of the Workshop, see the Call for Papers and the schedule in German language:

Materialien des Forschens und Lernens. Instrumente, Modelle und das praktische Erkennen aus historischer und soziologischer Perspektive

Early Career Workshop des GRK 2696, Bergische Universität Wuppertal

Jan Nicolay, Sabrina Engert, Lena Filzen & Jasmin Dierkes

Der „Material Turn“ hat auch in der historischen und soziologischen Wissenschaftsforschung dazu geführt, dass der materiellen Seite von Wissen und Wissensproduktion verstärkte Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt wurde. Die Materialien, Instrumenten und Objekte repräsentieren nicht nur Strukturen und Entwicklungen einzelner wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen, sondern können selbst auch zum Träger von Wissen werden. Gleichzeitig bedingen einzelne Materialien die Wissensproduktion.

Erstens als Materialien, die zur Datengewinnung in praktischen Experimenten herangezogen werden, beispielsweise in der Ozeanforschung Messgeräte zur Bestimmung von Temperatur, Salzgehalt oder Strömungsverhältnissen. Zweitens als Materialien, die zur Kontextualisierung und Verarbeitung von Daten im Forschungsprozess genutzt werden, beispielsweise Winkel, Zirkel oder Maßbänder in der Kartografie und Flächenbestimmung. Drittens als Materialien, die zur Vermittlung von Wissen dienen wie anatomische Modelle oder Puppen in der Medizin.

Aufgabe des Workshops ist es Forschungsprojekte mit unterschiedlichen Materialien des Forschens und Lernens nebeneinander zu betrachten, um so die verschiedenen Objekte, die in wissenschaftlichen Prozessen von den Forschenden gebraucht werden, herauszustellen. Die genannten verschiedenen Arten von Materialien repräsentieren und formen dabei den idealtypischen Ablauf des Forschungsprozesses. Es sind aber auch andere Beispiele willkommen, die anhand einzelner Objekte historische und soziologische Mikroprozesse von Forschung aufdecken und gegebenenfalls ihre Verwobenheit mit dem Makrokontext des Wissenschaftssystems in Zusammenhang bringen.

Der Workshop richtet sich explizit an Doktoranden oder andere Early Career Forschende, um einen offenen Raum des Austausches zu schaffen. Das Bestreben ist es explizit unterschiedliche Felder der Wissenschaftsforschung, science and technology studies oder artverwandten Feldern, die sich den genannten soziologischen oder historischen Materialien widmen ins Gespräch zu bringen, um Verknüpfungen und Einblicke in die Materialien des Forschens und Lernen zu bekommen, die sonst vereinzelt in Subdisziplinen verbleiben würden.

From March 27 to 28, 2025, scientists from all over the world came together to participate in a workshop on “Scientific Pluralism, Epistemic Diversity, and Progress in Science” in Wuppertal, Germany. The event was hosted and organized by PhD students Jeremias Düring, Charlotte Constanze Poller and Anastasiia Lazutkina, who are part of the DFG Research Training Group 2696 “Transformations of Science and Technology since 1800”.

The workshop brought together scholars at all academic levels – from graduate students to full professors – and created a lively interdisciplinary environment with an impressive number of participants. Among the participants were philosophers of science, historians of science, and sociologists of science, as well as scholars from neighbouring disciplines. The workshop explored the relationships between scientific pluralism, epistemic diversity, and scientific progress. Core questions included:

• Under what conditions does pluralism contribute to or hinder progress?
• How do different forms of pluralism—methodological, theoretical, epistemic—affect the development of science?
• What roles do social and institutional structures play in fostering or impeding pluralism and diversity in scientific research?

The first day began with an historical-philosophical framing of the topics of the workshop by Paul Hoyningen-Huene (University of Hannover) with the keynote lecture “Kuhn and Feyerabend on Pluralism and Progress”. This was followed by a series of papers reflecting on the relationship between pluralism and progress. The presentations included “Pluralism about progress” (Oscar Westerblad); a normative perspective on conceptual progress (Philipp Haueis); and the epistemology of evidence in cosmology (Anastasiia Lazutkina).

In the afternoon, further contributions addressed the role of values in environmental science (Emma Braccini & Filippo Murabito), the challenges of cultural diversity in scientific practice (Sapna Kumar), and the potential of radical pluralism as a strategy of explanation (Melinda Bonnie Fagan). The day concluded with a keynote lecture by Inkeri Koskinen (University of Helsinki), who examined institutional strategies to promote diversity in science, raising critical questions about their actual effectiveness and sparking a critical discussion on the role of policy and institutions in promoting epistemic diversity.

On the second day, David Ludwig (Wageningen University & Research) opened with a keynote on “Transformative Pluralism”, arguing that pluralism should not be the end point but the beginning of discussion. He emphasized the need to transform the way different perspectives relate to each other in actual scientific practice – from passive coexistence to active engagement. The talks that followed the third keynote brought applied case studies into dialogue with the workshop’s central themes: biomedical reasoning in Alzheimer’s research (Matteo Vagelli), the limits of pluralism in psychological well-being research (Charlotte Constanze Poller), pluralist strategies in ecological economics (Jeremias Düring), and the division of epistemic labor in economic modelling (Teemu Lari).

Across both days, the workshop provided a platform for intense and open discussion, highlighting not only the philosophical and methodological challenges of scientific pluralism, but also the social, institutional, and normative tensions involved in cultivating diversity within science.

The organizers want to thank the DFG Research Training Group 2696 “Transformations of Science and Technology since 1800” – especially the coordinator Nina Lorbach – for the financial and organisational support as well as the German Association for Philosophy of Science (GAP) for further financial support.

Senior scholars, early-career researchers, and students from various academic disciplines gathered in Wuppertal for the workshop on “Methodological Transformations in Fundamental Physics” from September 16 to 18. The event, organized by our Research Training Group, provided an interdisciplinary platform to explore the dynamic and plastic character of “the” scientific method in fundamental physics.

Participants presented their latest research in their respective fields (philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, history and sociology of science, and social epistemology).
On the first day, presentations and discussions focused on the nature of evidence and the challenges of methods for testing and confirming theories in the field. Keynote presentations on the nature and limits of eliminative reasoning by Chris Smeenk (Western University) and on meta-empirical theory assessment in relation to special relativity by Richard Dawid (Stockholm University) set the stage for contributions on the observation of binary black hole mergers (Sarwar Ahmed), consilience arguments about the Hawking effect (Erik Curiel), and gauge invariance considerations in fundamental physics (Guy Hetzroni). Our principal investigator, Radin Dardashti, discussed issues surrounding the notion of scientific discovery.

On the second and third days, the workshop gradually shifted towards heuristics and open-endedness in scientific methodology, starting with a keynote on knowledge transfer in theory building by Elena Castellani (University of Florence) and Emilia Margoni (University of Geneva). The talk was followed by presentations on social dilemmas in high-energy physics (Lucas Gautheron), and on the roles of theoretical virtues and economical considerations in pursuit worthiness assessment (Enno Fischer & Patrick M. Duerr).

The 2nd day’s afternoon session was opened with a historical perspective by Helge Kragh (University of Copenhagen), followed by a number of presentations assessing statements of progress in cosmology (Patrick M. Duerr & Finnur Dellsén) and pursuit-worthiness in relation to the dark matter hypothesis (Antonis Antoniou) or the LCDM model (Anastasiia Lazutkina). As part of this session focused on cosmology, Mauro Dorato discussed conceptual issues regarding the concept of cosmological time.

The last day began with a keynote by Mike D. Schneider (University of Missouri) on creativity and un-creativity in contemporary fundamental physics research. It was followed by a talk by Helen Meskhidze on solution-generating techniques in general relativity, and ended with a historical overview of string theory research and its evolving relationship with physical reality (Robert van Leeuwen).

These talks sparked lively debates regarding pursuit-worthiness, continuities and discontinuities in fundamental physics, and the future of the field in general. More generally, the workshop provided an opportunity for both young and established scholars, from all over Europe and North America, to comment on each others’ works and engage deeply with perspectives from different fields and areas of fundamental physics.

Hast du Interesse an einem Einblick in die Wissenschaft weißt aber nicht wie?

Du kannst Fragen stellen, mehr über wissenschaftliche Forschung erfahren und verstehen, wie die Wissenschaft funktioniert. In gemeinsamen Workshops gehen wir beispielsweise den Fragen nach, was es für Wege oder berufliche Laufbahnen in der Wissenschaft gibt, wie du einen solchen Weg planen kannst und was du dabei beachten musst. Das Programm soll dir helfen, wissenschaftliche Fähigkeiten aufzubauen, damit du eigenständig in der Forschung arbeiten und bei akademischen Projekten punkten kannst. Außerdem wird dein Selbstvertrauen im Umgang mit wissenschaftlichen Kompetenzen gestärkt. Durch die persönliche Betreuung von Mentor*innen aus dem GRK erhältst du hilfreiche Unterstützung.

her.culis ist ein Förderprogramm, das vom Graduiertenkolleg 2696 getragen wird. Es spricht gezielt Bachelor-Studentinnen der Fakultäten 1, 2 und 4 an der Bergischen Universität Wuppertal an und hat sich dem Ziel verschrieben, den weiblichen wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchs frühzeitig zu fördern und zu stärken. Dieses Programm ist Teil des Engagements der Universität, den Anteil von Frauen in der Wissenschaft zu erhöhen.

Das Programm geht über einen Zeitraum von einem Jahr und startet am 01.06.2024. Es bietet den Teilnehmerinnen die Möglichkeit, an eigenen Projekten zu arbeiten und wertvolle Kontakte mit Expert*innen zu knüpfen. Darüber hinaus erhalten sie eine Vergütung für ihre Tätigkeit und haben Zugang zu interaktiven Workshops, die ihre wissenschaftliche Kompetenz weiterentwickeln.

Durch her.culis sollen junge Frauen ermutigt werden, sich frühzeitig mit der Wissenschaft auseinanderzusetzen und ihren Platz darin zu finden. Das Programm unterstützt sie dabei, ihre Fähigkeiten zu entwickeln und bietet die Möglichkeit, sich in ein Netzwerk einzubinden.

Informationen zum Programm und zur Bewerbung: https://www.gleichstellung.uni-wuppertal.de/de/foerderprogramme-instrumente/wissenschaftliche-laufbahn-fuer-frauen/

Two of our PhD students have attended the 9th Norwegian Conference on the History of Science in November 2023 (financed with funds from the Research Training Group). Jasmin Dierkes contributed to the conference with a talk “On dummies and dates: The advent of simulation-based training in medical education”. Nora Schierenbeck gave a talk “About the Classification of Personality Disorders: Transformations in the Face of Definable Landmarks or Incremental Change?”. If you are interested into their experiences in Trondheim, you can read about it in their interview.