CSS Board
The Centre for Science Studies is led by a board based at Lancaster University (see also CSS Governance).
Joe Deville
… is Director of the Centre for Science Studies and senior lecturer based jointly in the Department of Organisation, Work and Technology and the Department of Sociology. His research interests include: the everyday, embodied life of debt, credit and finance; informational mobility, methods of algorithmic prediction, digital marketing practices; open access and the politics of academic knowledge production; disaster preparedness and the production/materialisation of risk; science and technology studies, speculative sociology, non-representational theory; and digital methods. Further details about Joe.
Dawn Goodwin
… is Deputy Director of the Centre for Science Studies and senior lecturer in the Lancaster Medical School. She works on cultures of health care and issues of learning, knowledge and practice, with a focus on decision making and accountability, patient safety, the construction of evidence and expertise, diagnostic work and embodied knowledge. She also explores collaborative work in critical care, and human-machine relations. Further details about Dawn.
Lisa Ashmore
… is senior lecturer in Social Sciences at Lancaster Medical School. Her research focuses on technologically mediated practices and draws on STS, Organisation Studies and Feminist Technoscience. She is interested in how practitioners generate knowledge, looking at how practices ‘on the move’ feed into interests in knowledge production, accountability, responsibility and autonomy in practice. Further details about Lisa.
Hameed Chughtai
… is a Senior Lecturer with Lancaster University Management School. He is an ethnographer by training. His current research interests include decolonial approaches to research and studying how marginalized populations such as Indigenous Peoples engage with, adapt, and use information technologies in their practices. Further details about Hameed.
Rolien Hoyng
… is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies in the Department of Sociology. Her research addresses digital infrastructures and data-centric technologies in particular contexts of practice, including smart-city politics and dissent as well as ecological governance and waste. Her work is often multi-sited and encompasses Turkey, Hong Kong, and Europe Further details about Rolien.
Nils Markusson
… is lecturer in Lancaster Environment Centre, and works on the politics of environmental technology. He is a social scientist, with a background in engineering, innovation policy, innovation studies (STS), and political economy. Much of his work is done in multi- and interdisciplinary collaborations, spanning social science, natural science, engineering and the humanities. Further details about Nils.
Vicky Singleton
… is Professor in Sociology and Women’s Studies and a former Director of the Centre for Science Studies. She uses STS to work on care in and for policy. She focuses on how health care practices produce particular subjects and objects, distribute rights and resources in intimate everyday social-material practices, and how health care policy might be enacted in ways that are care-full and appreciative of practices and contexts. Further details about Vicky.
Theo Vurdubakis
… is Professor of Organisation and Technology in the Lancaster University Management School. He explores the role of technologies in social organisation and is currently working on an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project to explore knowledge management and enterprise resource planning systems (ERP). Further details about Theo.
Gordon Walker
… is Professor in the Lancaster Environment Centre. He is a human geographer interested in the relations between technology, environment, justice and practice. He has researched a wide range of cases and concerns – including energy demand, community energy, fuel poverty, thermal risks, zero carbon homes, flooding and air quality – drawing on concepts and literatures from human geography, STS, and normative theory. Further details about Gordon.
Andy Yuille
… is a post-doctoral researcher focusing on the interfaces between different knowledges and motivations in the practical application of policy. He combines an academic approach informed by STS with 15 years’ experience of working with NGOs, policy-makers and community groups to influence environmental policy and practice. His interests include innovative participatory governance arrangements and developing circular economies. Further details about Andy.
CSS Members
The centre is supported by its members. Any Lancaster-based student or member of staff may ask to become a CSS member (see also CSS Governance). Members are also offered the opportunity to be assigned a CSS mentor. The role of a CSS mentor is to provide guidance to colleagues in relation to any challenges associated broadly connected to working and developing as an STS-influenced scholar. To request to become a member of CSS or if you an existing member and are interested in being assigned a CSS mentor, please email the CSS Director, including a brief description of why the CSS is relevant to your work.
Grace Bridgewater
… is a PhD student at Lancaster Environment, where she studies the political economics of agricultural plastic. Her work looks at farming identities, relationships to land, and how this intersects with the economy. She is particularly interested in investigating alternative economics (circular, doughnut etc.) and how this relates to what we see as valuable. Grace sees this material-specific perspective as a fantastic opportunity to allow for some novel and nuanced comparisons and contrasts to be made between farmers.
Emma Cardwell
… is a lecturer in economic geography in the Lancaster Environment Centre. She uses STS to think about the relationship between economic, scientific, philosophical and lay knowledge-practices; and what these mean for equality and environmental harm. Her research focuses on food production.
Mo Cheded
… is a Lecturer in Marketing at Lancaster University Management School. He is primarily interested in the sociological aspects of consumption, markets, gender, and health. Much of his work sits at the intersection of gender studies and science & technology studies. His research takes an interdisciplinary perspective to focus on topics such as inequality, identity construction, and power relations.
Choon Key Chekar
… is a Senior Research Associate at Division of Health Research, within Lancaster University’s Faculty of Health and Medicine, currently working on the ways to strengthen the health equity focus in public and population health research. She is also a co-investigator of Optimising Coronavirus Testing Systems (https://www.octs.info) project funded by UKRI Ideas to Address COVID-19 grant (April 2020-ongoing). With a background in media and cultural studies, the focus of her research has been qualitative/ethnographic research on the media representation and lived experience of innovations in biomedicine, such as regenerative medicine and cancer genomics. Further details about Choon Key.
Michael Greenhough
… is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology. His research works with theories of STS to understand how energy supply and demand is constructed in the UK, in order to explore the assumptions made in adding new forms of renewable energy into the fuel mix to meet future net-zero ambitions. He is also interested in ideas related to social practices and rhythms to show the relevance of seasonality in the energy sector, and the multiple temporalities that shape energy use over different scales.
Naomi Hammett
… is a PhD student in Sociology. Her research centres around dairy farming and climate change and is concerned with how discourse relating to ‘net zero’ and reducing greenhouse gas emissions rub along together or don’t with everyday practices on dairy farms. She is particularly interested in imaginaries of cow futures and uses a multispecies approach. Further details about Naomi.
Emily Hoyle
… is a PhD student in Sociology. Working at the intersections of feminist technoscience and feminist cultural studies of science and technology, her research is an examination of the reproduction of power relations in the transhumanist imaginary, with a specific focus on the entanglement of masculinity and technology. The aim of her research is to gain a better understanding of how gender, race, sexuality, class etc. are reproduced in imaginings of transhumanist futures.
Janja Komljenovic
… is a Senior Lecturer. Her research interests broadly concern higher education policy and governance, the political economy of higher education and the digital economy. She is researching the diversity and complexity of markets in and around universities, including the variety of actors that have entered the sector, their strategies, ways of working, and consequences for higher education and societies at large. She is particularly interested in the platform capitalism and phenomena like digitalisation, datafication and platformization of universities. Further details about Janja.
Abi Lafbery
… is a PhD student in Sociology. Her research focuses upon ‘Decolonising Climate Futures’, specifically considering the role of Indigenous Peoples and practices in addressing the climate crisis. Her research will aim to explore the making and politics of climate knowledge, and more specifically, she hopes to study indigenous knowledge production and associated practices which aim to reduce climate vulnerabilities whilst also allowing indigenous cultures to flourish. Further details about Abi.
Brigit McWade
… is Lecturer in Medical Sociology and Lead for Widening Participation in Lancaster Medical School. Her interdisciplinary qualitative health research concerns the relationship between social inequalities and mental health, neurodiversity and disability. A central interest is the theoretical and political significance of socio-cultural representations of the lived experience of health and wellbeing, and their role in challenging oppression and instigating social change, grounded in feminist technoscience and mad studies. She is active in challenging oppression and inequalities in higher education, and is a board member of the Medical Schools Council EDI Alliance.
Luke Moffat
… is a writer and philosopher based in the Department of Sociology, specialising in ethics of technology, nature-philosophy, and speculative methods. He is interested in the relationships between natural processes, technological change, and social values. Most recently, Luke has published on datafication and securitization in global track and trace efforts, and is currently writing up the findings of ‘Dancing with the Troubles of AI’, a multi-disciplinary ritual design exercise. He has lectured in Philosophy, Politics, and Sociology, and is a member of the European Associate for Studies of Science and Technology. Someday he will publish his first novel, ‘No, mi Cielo’.
Juliana Michelon
… is a PhD student in Sociology. Her research focuses on the posthuman onto-epistemological shift in the study of large-scale cybernetic systems, with a particular interest in cyborg science and distributed cognitive agency in networked human-machine systems. She holds a Master of Arts in Science and Technology Studies and a professional background in governmental affairs and telecommunications.
Hannah Stoddart
… is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology. Her research uses STS theories, with a focus on boundaries and practices, to understand the different forms of social organisation that matter for first aid provision. Her research aims to reveal the limit and edges of responsibility, care, and training, to show how multiple intersections organise the ways in which first aid is structured and continues to change.
CSS Affiliates
The centre has been supported by many colleagues over the years both at Lancaster and elsewhere. CSS Affiliates includes former visitors to the Centre and colleagues who were based at Lancaster but who have now either left the university or retired.
Brian Bloomfield
… is Emeritus Professor in the Lancaster University Management School and former member of the CSS Board. He works on the sociology of science and technology, power and knowledge in IT, problems of order/disorder and technology, technology, time and narrative and the modernisation of public services. Further details about Brian.
Douglas Booker
… is a Lecturer in Indoor Air at the University of Leeds in its School of Civil Engineering. His research is as the interface of the natural and social sciences, advocating for a ‘critical’ air quality science that combines generating material understandings of the air with a critical reflection on the processes through which air quality knowledge is produced, and its implications for claims of environmental justice. Further details about Douglas.
MJ Hunter Brueggemann
… is the course leader for the MA Internet Equalities at the Creative Computing Institute at UAL (University of the Arts London), and Course/Year leader for the BA Fine Arts: Computational Arts specialising in adapting education for remote learning and decolonizing syllabi. Their expertise includes Cyborg, Posthuman, postcolonial theory and decolonial praxis, Sustainable Design, and more, focusing on queer, feminist, anti-racist, decolonizing, neuro-inclusive approaches to Digital Innovation.
Louise Elstow
… is a Research Associate in Infrastructure Climate Adaptation at the University of Cambridge. Her research deals with radiation contamination in Fukushima and how individuals and groups are measuring, monitoring and mapping radiological contamination after the 2011 nuclear incident at Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japan. She is interested in how this is informed by other linked practices and also more broadly interested in how contamination knowledge is constructed in the response to emergencies and also during the longer recovery period.
Mette Kragh-Furbo
… is a Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at the University of York and Department of Sociology, and a former member of the CSS Board. Her work explores how people make sense of their bodies drawing on a variety of different knowledges, and how they live with chronic illness, focusing on the social, practical and emotional burdens that accompany life with a chronic illness. Further details about Mette.
John Law
… is Honorary Professor in Sociology and former member of the CSS Board. He uses material-semiotic techniques to explore knowledge, method, and power in contexts of coloniality and postcoloniality in two locations: environmental disputes between Sámi indigenous people and Norwegian state authorities; and the character of a possible ‘Chinese-inflected’ STS. Both projects are collaborative. Further details about John.
Lisa Lindén
… is a researcher at the Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg and former visitor at the CSS. Her work is focused on on issues relating to medicine, healthcare, public health, gender and sexuality. Further details about Lisa.
Adrian MacKenzie
… is Professor in Sociology at the Australian National University (ANU) School of Sociology in Canberra and former member of the CSS Board. He works at the intersections of science and technology studies, media and cultural studies, and social and cultural theory to explore the overlaps and entanglements associated with network and computational media, sciences as forms of practice and thought, the social production of value and the invention of data-related methods.
Maureen McNeil
… is Emeritus Professor in Sociology at Lancaster University and former member of the CSS Board. Much of her research is at the intersection of cultural studies, feminist studies and science/technology studies. With a background in the history of science and in the cultural dimensions of the industrial revolution, Maureen’s academic life has been shaped by her commitments to the politicised inter-disciplines of cultural studies and feminist studies. Further details about Maureen.
Maxigas
… is a former lecturer in Critical Digital Media Practice in the Department of Sociology and is now based at the University of Amsterdam. He seeks answers to philosophical questions through empirical investigations from a broad Science and Technology Studies perspective. His research interests include the sociology of technology users; critiques of liberalism, capitalism and modernity; as well as the role of (classical) cybernetics in the intellectual trajectory and everyday practices of the human and natural sciences. Further details about Maxigas.
Maggie Mort
… is Professor Emerita in Sociology and former member of the CSS Board. She focuses on technological change in healthcare including telemedicine and telecare, and what counts as innovation in health science and technology using ethnographic and participative methodologies to explore how policy can be influenced by the experience of those it affects, most recently in relation to disaster and emergency management. Further details about Maggie.
Jess Phoenix
… is Head of Floods & Water Research at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). She completed her PhD at Lancaster University exploring the making of the livestock disease bovine Tuberculosis, using Science and Technology Studies to explore a range of stakeholders’ bovine Tuberculosis understandings so as to shape future management of the disease. Jess has broader interests in the creation and communication of evidence between academia and government. Further details about Jess.
Celia Roberts
… is Professor of Gender and Science Studies at the Australian National University (ANU) School of Sociology in Canberra and former member of the CSS Board. Her research centres on the body, health, reproduction, sexuality and ageing. Her latest book, Puberty in Crisis: a bio-psycho-social account, brings together feminist science studies, feminist theories of the body, sexuality and girlhood studies to explore the current global ‘crisis’ in sexual development.
Fadi Shayya … … is a lecturer in Architecture & Urbanism at the University of Salford and a CSS affiliate, working at the intersection of science and technology studies, spatial theory, design strategy, and the philosophy of technics. His research interests include the social studies of architecture, relational politics, sociotechnical associations, eco-infrastructural entanglements, spatialisation, machine ethnographies, design ecologies, mobilities, survivability, war/post-war geographies, critical military studies, patents, visual methods, cartography, digital humanities, and Actor-Network Theory.
Lucy Suchman
… is Professor Emerita in Sociology and a former member of the CSS Board. She works in feminist STS on technological imaginaries and material practices of technology design, and the interface of bodies and machines. Her current research extends her work on HCI to contemporary warfighting, explores whose bodies are incorporated into these systems, how this is done, and the consequences for social justice and the possibility of a less violent world. Further details about Lucy.
Richard Tutton
… is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York and former member of the CSS Board. He works at the intersection of the sociology of health and illness and STS in three areas: on expectations, imaginaries and futures in contemporary biomedicine and biotechnology; on changing subjectivities and identity categories in innovative biomedicine and technologies and everyday healthcare; and on interplanetary visions and futures in the possible human settlement of Mars.
Claire Waterton
… is Professor Emerita in Culture and Environment in Sociology and a former member of the CSS Board. She uses STS to understand contemporary environmental issues. She explores ‘environmental problems’ as particular kinds of orderings in on-going natureculture relations in order to open up questions about these relations, explore how they came into being, and the possibility of creating hopeful spaces for re-ordering them. Further details about Claire.
Brian Wynne
… is Emeritus Professor in Sociology at Lancaster University and former member of the CSS Board. His work has covered technology and risk assessment, public risk perceptions, and public understanding of science, focusing on the relations between expert and lay knowledge and policy decision-making. Before his retirement Brian Wynne was a Professor of Science Studies at CSEC and at the ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (CESAGen). Further details about Brian.