Karin Knorr Cetina

c:o/re short-term Senior Fellow (26/6 − 6/7/2022)

Karin Knorr Cetina is the O. Borchert Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Chicago. She is also Co-PI of a project on Agentic Media in the SFB Media of Cooperation at the University of Siegen, Germany.  She published extensively in the area of science and technology studies, the sociology of finance, and social theory. Her writings include the book “Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge” (Harvard UP 2003; Winner of the Ludwick Fleck Price and Robert K. Merton Professional Award), “Takeover by Science. The Long Contemporary History of Financial Markets” (2020),  “Global Microstructures: The Virtual Societies of Financial Markets” (with Urs Bruegger, winner of Theory Prize of the  ASA section on Social Theory, 2007) and the just finished book “Synthetic Markets: The Currency Market as a Media-Institution” (to appear 2023). She is currently conducting research on algorithms and their embeddedness in contemporary social transformations.

Most recent awards and honors: Niklas Luhmann Distinguished Visiting Chair in Social Theory, University of Bielefeld, 2022; Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2021, George Sarton Medal and Chair, University of Ghent,  2019-20, Gutenberg Research Award, 2017, Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Scientific Research, German Sociological Association, 2016.


Project Description

Karin Knorr Cetina’s current research focusses on science and technology and its changing research cultures resulting from the integration of Artificial Intelligence into the conduct of research. She is particularly interested in the fields of computer science, AI and HCI themselves and in natural science as well as human science applications and the challenges these pose.  She is also interested in the visions of scientific futures opened up by AI. Knorr Cetina will conduct interviews in regard to these topics while at the RWTH Aachen University.

Publications (selection)

Knorr Cetina, Karin D. 2023. Synthetic Markets: The Virtual Societies of Financial Markets (forthcoming)
Knorr Cetina, Karin D. 2020. The Long Contemporary History of Financial Markets. In Sartoniana vol. 33:17-67
Knorr Cetina, Karin D. 2003. Epistemic Cultures. How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (3rd printing 2003)
Knorr Cetina, Karin D. and Alex Preda (eds.). 2014. Handbook of the Sociology of Finance. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Knorr Cetina, Karin D. 2009. The Synthetic Situation: Interactionism for a Global World. In Symbolic Interaction 32(1): 61-87