Many of our activities take place in the RUSTlab. For information please see: https://rustlab.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/

RUSTlab Lectures Summer Term 2024

Summer Term 2024, MB 4/165 at Ruhr-University Bochum and Zoom
The programme for the 11^th round of the RUSTlab Lecture series is now available. The lectures will take place on site in MB 4/165 and online via Zoom. This semester's guiding theme is "Replacement" and speakers include Ronja Trischler (TU Dortmund), Klaus Høyer (University of Copenhagen), Robert Queckenberg (Ruhr-University Bochum) and Leman Çelik (Ruhr-University Bochum). Please find more information here. Everyone is most welcome!

Inaugural Conference of stsing: Leakage

19th – 22nd March 2024, TU Dresden
The CUPAK team travels collectively to the inaugural conference of ststing Leakage at the TU Dresden to present their current research.
In their presentation „On Becoming an Infrastructure: Personas of Participation and Intervention“, Mace Ojala and Fabian Pittroff will draw on their ongoing projects within the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) Virtual Lifeworlds to investigate practices of data handling and their infrastructures. Their presentation will also review how participatory and interventionist research can benefit from the deployment of practical personas—virtual characters that STS ethnographers and infrastructure caretakers can enact to become effective and creative agents of a common research environment.
Estrid Sørensen, Leman Celik and Stefan Laser will chair a panel on „Planetary Data“, focusing on the question of how to live well with data on a damaged planet. Drawing on their work within the CRC subproject Virtual Infrastructures, they will also give a presentation on „Planetary Knowledges: How Data Infrastructures Link Science with the Planet“ together with Sandra Abels and Lynn Werner. The presentation will discuss current STS literature and how it engages with (1) extractive and other planetary relations including their local and geopolitical effects, (2) scientific data infrastructures, and the care for planetary matter in operation and maintenance, and with (3) scientific data practices and their dependencies on data infrastructures.

Chip Rush? Semiconductors in Vietnam as a Public Controversy

5th March 2024, Mipec Tower Hanoi
As a part of the CRC subproject Virtual Lifeworlds Stefan Laser will organise a workshop on semiconductors in Vietnam as a public controversy together with the local architectural office and research team Hanoi Ad Hoc.
Semiconductors are coming to Vietnam. But not without uncertainties and controversies. What are the regulations, prominent voices, allies, and opponents shaping the "chip rush"? What are the affected communities and their interpretations of the matter? Together with Hanoi Ad Hoc, Stefan Laser investigated company data, legal developments and the public discourse in order to find an approach to the complex situation. The workshop will include a presentation of preliminary findings, reports from stakeholders, and a group discussion.
More information can be found on the website of the CRC.

Quo Vadis kulturwissenschaftliche Digital Humanities?

28th February 2024, University of Passau
As part of the DHd conference "Quo Vadis Digital Humanities?" at the University of Passau, Estrid Sørensen will present a talk on cultural studies perspectives in the German-speaking digital humanities together with Ina Dietzsch, Lina Franken, Sabine Imeri, Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda and Libuše Hannah Vepřek. 
Even ten years after the first DHd conference, cultural studies and, in particular, empirical cultural studies perspectives are still an exception in the German-speaking digital humanities (DH). The panel will discuss how cultural studies DH is organised and which directions can be taken in the future.  Specific methodological developments will be presented and combined with conceptual-theoretical considerations. The panel will examine what relevant areas of DH are or can be in the empirical cultural studies disciplines and what role DH currently plays in cultural studies. Linked to this is the question of how this could change in the near future, which steps are expedient for this and what is currently preventing cultural studies from being more closely integrated into DH. Closely related to this is the identification of new perspectives that bring empirical cultural studies research into the DH and develop it further. The aim is to identify methodological potential as well as theoretical-conceptual perspectives that further differentiate cultural studies DH.
More information on the talk and the conference paper can be found here.

Data Journey in Scientific Practices

22nd-23rd February 2024, Goethe University Frankfurt
Leman Çelik will present her research on "Data Journey in Scientific Practices" at the workshop "Data Stops Data Flows: Exploring Methods for Researching (with) Data", organized by the project group "Tracing Data Politics" at Goethe University Frankfurt on 22-23 February. You can find more information about the workshop here.

Authors' workshop: Knowledge production, data infrastructures and planetary matter

23rd - 24th November 2023, Collaboration Space GB 8/129 at the Ruhr-University Bochum
How does scientific knowledge production through its engagement with data and data infrastructures come to have planetary effects? How does planetary matter through its transformation into data and data infrastructures contribute to shaping particular (new) modes of knowledge production? This is a follow-up workshop where we discuss contributions to a special issue in preparation.
Please find the poster for this workshop here.

Everyday scientific data practices and their planetary matter

4th October 2023, 15:15 hrs., Dietrich-Keuning-Haus, Dortmund
The environmental impacts of "Big Tech" and "Clouds" are well documented in the literature, but narratives about the entanglement of scientific data practices and the ecological environment through data infrastructures are lacking. Leman Celik and Estrid Sørensen have conducted interviews with scientists in data-intensive research fields that show an increased expansion of scientific data infrastructures. They present the results at this year's conference of the German Society for Empirical Cultural Studies (DGEKW) and focus on the few but important moments of everyday scientific data practices that relate data infrastructures to energy consumption and hardware production.

RUSTlab Lectures Winter Term 2023/24

Winter term 2023/24, Ruhr-University Bochum and via Zoom
The programme for the 10^th round of the RUSTlab Lecture series is now available. The lectures will take place on site and online. The guiding theme this semester is "Best Futures" and speakers include Nancy Mauro-Flude (RMIT University, Australia), Stefan Laser (Ruhr-University Bochum), Hannes Krämer and Dominik Gerst (University of Duisburg-Essen), René Tuma (TU Berlin) and Femke Snelting (The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest). Please find more information here. Everyone is most welcome!