Finding your way in STS
Watch Wiebe Bijker’s valedictory lecture, and read about what his colleagues made for him. Book and music.
Sending postcards
While some colleagues were doing fieldwork for the Making Clinical Sense project, we wrote postcards to each other. They documented observations, ideas, dilemmas, puzzles, and everyday happenings. Of course they are short, capturing moments of observation or questions or a short greeting. But as we have learned in our project, from studying how doctors learn […]
Digital hopes and fears in times of pandemic
Earlier this year, the corona virus started to take its toll around the world. It affects people’s health and daily lives, and healthcare systems. The economic well-being of individuals, companies, sectors and countries are threatened. This short article draws on input provided by early career researchers involved in the Digital Society Programme (that involves all […]
Health, Technology & Society: “Greatest Hits”
Together with Andrew Webster (University of York, England), I have edited a book. It is both a celebration of the Health, Technology and Society series (published by Palgrave Macmillan) that we have jointly edited since 2006. In this compilation, we aim to capture examples of the excellent scholarship that the series produced and to reflect […]
Designing spaces for teaching and learning
On 22 October 2019, Anna Harris (Maastricht), Shanti Sumartojo (Monash) and I organised a workshop in Maastricht about how to design teaching and learning spaces, using tools from sensory and design ethnography. About 30 colleagues attended, and you can read more about it on the blog we prepared for the Teaching and Learning blog of […]
Libraries, memories, voting, specula
I occasionally dabble in other bits of writing, beyond my main academic concerns of things to do with digital technologies. In recent months, I’ve written about the London Library, the injustice of not being able to vote in the Netherlands, the memories contained in a small wooden box, and my life through cervical smears. Memories […]
Columns in Observant, Maastricht University newspaper
Between 2017-20, I wrote occasional columns for Observant, the independent newspaper of Maastricht University. It was fun, reaching out to a different kind of audience – academic, but not necessarily research focused. Sticking to 400 words, and not including copious references and nuanced explanation was a challenge. My first column appeared in the first week […]
SHI Book Prize & Routledge Handbook
Together with Anna Harris (Maastricht) and Susan Kelly (Exeter), we have won the 2017 Sociology of Health and Illness book prize for our book CyberGenetics: Health Genetics and New Media (Routledge 2016). The award is given each year by the Medical Sociology group of the British Sociological Association for the book that makes ‘the most […]
Addiction as metaphor for internet use
Back in April, I attended a wonderful workshop organised by Astrid Mager and Christian Katzenbach called, ‘“We are on a mission”. Exploring the role of future imaginaries in the making and governing of digital technology’. The title of my lecture was inspired by my yoga teacher, who once instructed us to ‘imagine you are an […]
Politics of Open Data
It’s taken a while (we first presented the paper at a conference in 2014), but it has now been published in a book called The Politics of Big Data. Big Data, Big Brother?, edited by Ann Rudinow Sætnan, Ingrid Schneider and Nicola Green (Routledge, 2018). Our chapter is called: Understanding the ‘open’ in making research […]