Does Science Have a Gender?
At a time when scientific authority is being increasingly contested and questions of gender are subject to intense social, political, and academic debate, this course offers an opportunity to examine how these two domains have been historically and practically intertwined. Why do we know so few women scientists as we move further back in time? Why do STEM fields and engineering remain intensively male-dominated even today? Whose bodies, identities, and experiences are taken as the norm in science and whose are rendered invisible or problematic? Who fits into science and who does not? Are epistemic ideas gendered? Can scientific objects have gender?
Science Has Gender examines how gender shapes scientific knowledge, practices, and authority across different historical periods and epistemic contexts and how science, in turn, has naturalized gendered assumptions. Rather than treating science as a neutral or autonomous enterprise, the course approaches it as a socially embedded activity in which questions, methods, standards of evidence, and forms of expertise are historically situated and gendered: who could produce scientific knowledge, under what conditions, and with what kinds of recognition? Through historical case studies ranging from the early modern period to the present, students will engage with feminist and gender-informed approaches in the history of science.
The course will be taught in English and will take place in the STGS Chair’s Meeting Room 02.21, Werner-von-Siemens-Straße 61, Erlangen.
view on campo to see more details.
Advanced Topics in Science and Technology Studies
This seminar engages with advanced topics and research problems in Science and Technology Studies (STS). Building on established STS perspectives, the course focuses on complex cases and analytical challenges where scientific knowledge, technological systems, and social order are deeply entangled.
The seminar is organized around selected controversies, empirical cases, and conceptual problems drawn from areas such as environmental science, biomedicine, digital technologies, and public expertise. Students will examine how scientific claims and technological arrangements are negotiated across institutional, political, and public settings, and how STS scholarship approaches situations marked by uncertainty, disagreement, and competing forms of knowledge.
The course will be taught in English and will take place in the STGS Chair’s Meeting Room 02.21, Werner-von-Siemens-Straße 61, Erlangen.
view on campo to see more details.