Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Giora Hon
c:o/re short term fellow Prof. Dr. Giora Hon has been awarded with an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (Renewed Research Stay) for the period from 1 January to 31 March 2024, which gives him the opportunity to continue working on his research while staying in the research environment of c:o/re in Aachen.
During the fellowship, Giora Hon will work on his project entitled “A History of the Concept of Model”: How were models, designed as didactic devices, transformed into tools of research? A philosophical analysis of this fundamental change in the late nineteenth century will be the focus of this research stay.
We congratulate Giora on the fellowship and look forward to further cooperation, for example the organization of a workshop on concept formation in May 2024. Stay tuned!
Objects of Research: Alin Olteanu
Today, c:o/re post-doc and publications coordinator Alin Olteanu shares a picture of an object sitting on his desk in the c:o/re office. He is currently researching the social and cultural consequences of digitalization.
“The 3D replica of my teeth that stands on my desk reminds me of two important things. First, a model is what we make of it. The epistemic value of modelling lies in interpretation, which depends on but is not defined by representation. I make something very different of (a replica of) teeth than a dentist and an archaeologist do.
Secondly, and not any less important, this replica reminds me to smile, and I hope that it might inspire colleagues to smile, too, when they see it on my desk.
To tell a smile from a veil, as Pink Floyd ask us to, we need to know that a smile is infinitely more important than scientific modelling. If scientific modelling does not lead to smiling, it is of no value. A smile is a good metonymy to be reminded by.”
Would you like to find out more about our Objects of Research series at c:o/re? Then take a look at the pictures by Benjamin Peters, Andoni Ibarra and Hadeel Naeem.
Get to know our fellows: Hadeel Naeem
Get to know our current fellows and gain an impression of their research.
In a new series of short videos, we asked them to introduce themselves, talk about their work at c:o/re, the impact of their research on society and give book recommendations.
You can now watch the third video of the philosopher Hadeel Naeem on our Youtube channel:
Objects of Research: Hadeel Naeem
For today’s edition of our “Objects of Research” series, we interviewed c:o/re Junior Fellow Hadeel Naeem. Her current research focuses on how to responsibly extend the mind with AI systems and therefore acquire extended knowledge.
“A pen and a notebook are essential for my research. They help me think. It’s not at all about the words I write. I rarely read them again. Scribbling is just an act that helps me stack ideas on top of each other and do all the complicated thinking and connection-building.
I also turn to scribbling in my notebook when I am stuck in the writing process. There is often a time after the first rough draft of the paper when some ideas stop flowing smoothly or don’t fit very well with the main argument. I turn to the notebook and start writing the main ideas, deliberating how they support each other.
This is all especially interesting since a lot of my research is about extended cognition, which is the idea that we sometimes employ external resources such that part of our thinking happens outside our body (in these resources).”
Call for Abstracts: Workshop on “Participation and STS sensibilities: taking stock and moving forward”
Interested scholars are invited to submit abstracts for the workshop “Participation and STS sensibilities: taking stock and moving forward”. This workshop aims to explore what taking STS sensibilities seriously would mean for conceiving, understanding, practicing, and valuing public participation.
Keynote speaker: Professor Jason Chilvers (University of East Anglia)
Date: 23 May 2024
Location: Maastricht, The Netherlands
Abstract submission: abstracts (500 words) can be submitted here by 15 January 2024.
The workshop is organized by Care and Public Health Institute (Maastricht University, The Netherlands) with support of The Käte Hamburger Kolleg: Cultures of Research and Human Technology Center (RTWH Aachen University, Germany) and Spiral Research Centre (University of Liege, Belgium).
More information on the workshop theme can be found on the website: https://www.inpart-project.com/news/participation-and-sts-sensibilities-workshop/
Feel free to contact Olga Zvonareva (o.zvonareva@maastrichtuniversity) and Natasa Stoli (a.stoli@maastrichtuniversity) with any questions.
Get to know our fellows: Hans Ekkehard Plesser
Get to know our current fellows and gain an impression of their research.
In a new series of short videos, we asked them to introduce themselves, talk about their work at c:o/re, the impact of their research on society and give book recommendations.
You can now watch the second video of the neuroscientist Hans Ekkehard Plesser on our Youtube channel:
Call for Papers: Summer School on “The transformation challenge: Re-Thinking cultures of research”
The Miguel Sánchez‐Mazas Chair (University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU), the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS, KIT Karlsruhe) and the The Käte Hamburger Kolleg: Cultures of Research at RWTH Aachen University will be hosting an International Summer School for PhD students, titled “The transformation challenge: Re-Thinking cultures of research” (Organizers: Stefan Böschen, RWTH/Käte Hamburger Kolleg Cultures of Research; Andoni Ibarra, UPV/EHU; Bettina‐Johanna Krings, ITAS/KIT; Andreas Lösch, ITAS/KIT; and Hannot Rodríguez, UPV/EHU).
The Summer School offers PhD students the opportunity to develop their projects in a stimulating working atmosphere and in an international context. We aim to provide an inspirational environment for learning and discussion that ensures excellent feedback on everyone’s work, in formats such as “Lecture”, “Individual Presentation”, “Workshop” and “Poster Presentation” (Keynote lecturers: Guido Caniglia, Helen Longino, Clark Miller and Harald Rohracher).
The Summer School is open to PhD students at any stage of the progress in their dissertation project. Please apply by January 15th 2024 at the latest by sending your proposals to
Bettina-Johanna.Krings@kit.edu.
For the requirements of your application and further information concerning the content and research questions of the Summer School, see the flyer.
Objects of Research: Andoni Ibarra
Today we proceed with our “Objects of Research” series and a picture by c:o/re alumni fellow Andoni Ibarra, whose research focuses on the performative character of scientific representations in the constitution of the world.
“Spending a few weeks in Argentina, in front of my desk, a Post Office building. A nice futuristic architectural concept, degraded by its construction materials, support of a communication antenna, appropriated by pigeons as a dovecote: a hybrid object.”
Objects of Research: Benjamin Peters
For the first post in our „Objects of Research“ series, we interviewed c:o/re alumni fellow Benjamin Peters, who works on artful intelligence, broadly taken across the long Soviet century.
“By saying that I study ‘artful intelligence’, which I mean only as a half joke, I take seriously the propositions to my career as a media scholar that…
1. As the first image suggests, human artfulness can be found all around, such as this snapshot of a wall on a side street not far from the Cultures of Research at the RWTH.
2. Sometimes architectural masterpieces that represent more than the sharp angles of twentieth-century modernism are all about us, such as this bus stop on the way to Cultures of Research in Aachen. Any study of science and technology has to ask, what does it mean? Sources do not speak for themselves.
3. Sometimes artificial intelligence is best found in letting people be people, such as a doodle here in a sketchbook. Straight lines do not always precipitate straightness.
4. I study how science, technology, and artificial intelligence has been understood in different times and places, such as this remote-controlled robot that failed in the immediate aftermath of the Chernobyl explosion in 1986 in Soviet Ukraine, which helps unstiffen, enliven, and sober our imagination of what may already be the case today and could be the case tomorrow.”
Walter Benjamin Fellowships for Anna Laktionova and Svitlana Shcherbak
c:o/re fellows Anna Laktionova and Svitlana Shcherbak have both received a fellowship from the Walter Benjamin Programme, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), which enables them to continue working independently on their research projects at c:o/re even after the end of their c:o/re fellowship.
We would like to congratulate both of them and are delighted to be able to continue working together under one roof.
Here is what Anna Laktionova wants to do during the scholarship and what it means to her:
My project “Towards the agency based philosophy of (advanced) technology” is for me a very inspiring possibility to continue elaborating the maintained approach of Philosophy of Action and Agency within such nowadays fields as Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Engineering, STS etc. It involves theoretical and practical philosophical methodological platforms; allows me to continue professional grows and integrating into western Philosophical and Scientific circles including inter-, cross-, trans- disciplinary levels, for example, visit and participate in events of RWTH’s Institute of Industrial Engineering, Center for Construction Robotics, The RWTH Chair Individual and Technology, other labs. I plan to concentrate on such problematic plots as: agency-based philosophy of (advanced) technologies and ongoing technological transformations towards advanced technologies; varieties of types, levels, scales of machinic actions and human-robot interactions; machine learning methods and adaptive robots; problematic machinic actions and ethical regulations for trustworthy adaptive robotics; changing of the conceptual angle of view from technology descriptions to philosophy of action and agency; aligning man-machine interactivity.
From the personal side, the fellowship gives me possibility to continue to save my (now almost 3-years old daughter) from the awful war taking place in Ukraine. I enormously appreciate understanding, support, help from colleagues, staff and people in Aachen.
Svitlana Shcherbak will work on her research project entitled “Modernization Theory: Between Science and Politics. Case of Russia”:
The Conception of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, adopted in March 2023, for the first time defines Russia as a “civilization-state”. Russia is seen there as a conservative and technologically oriented sovereign state opposed to the “West”. Russia’s official ideology combines a conservative political agenda with the idea of technological modernization. It is a paradigm shift that has not come out of nowhere. This two-year research project investigates the academic (i.e., social science) and political discourse gradually introducing this shift in the post-Soviet space in relation to Western modernization theory. It examines the main shifts in the meaning of the “core concepts” of modernization theory, such as “democracy”, “development”, “freedom”, etc., in the Russian cultural and political context since 1990, compared to their original formulation in the Western social science, and how social theory has become an important ideological concept in Russian politics. To achieve this goal, the research is based on a qualitative discourse analysis. The theory of modernization was chosen because it is a grand theory that offers a broad vision of history and social development and is an important part of the social imagination. Modernization theory reflects not only the deep assumptions of the societies in which it emerges, but also those of the recipient societies. The case of Russia is particularly interesting, because the concept of modernization retains a central place in Russian political discourse, even though the basic assumptions of modernization theory contradict Russia’s self-description.
