Many of our activities take place in the RUSTlab. For information please see: https://rustlab.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/
In Cooperation with the Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography (PECE), Dr. Tim Schütz (University of California, Irvine) will organise a RUSTlab workshop dealing with a digital analytics for qualitative research. PECE has been a digital research infrastructure developed by ethnographers for over ten years. The open platform enables students and researchers to collaboratively archive, analyze, and publish research data multimodally with research participants. As part of the PECE Workshop Tour in the cities of Marburg, Frankfurt a. M., Berlin, Bremen and Bochum, Schütz, who is a member of the international PECE Design Group, provides insights into working with and within PECE instances. Using ongoing projects such as Environmental Governance: Global Record and the Critical Cultural Theory Archive (with material from George Marcus and Michael Fischer, among others), he will show how ethnographic research can be organized, networked, and published in PECE. Afterwards, workshop participants will work together to create initial content on the STS Infrastructures instance, focusing on the topic of data ideologies. In particular, the functionalities of PECE essays (including photo essays and timelines) will be made comprehensible in a practical way.
More information can be found here.
October 2025
Together with Andrei Korbut, Olga Galanova has edited the special issue ‘Discovery in Action’ in the journal Ethnographic Studies. Their special issue takes an expanded perspective on the concept of ‘discovery,’ moving away from purely scientific approaches to this phenomenon. Their goal is to recognise that discoveries are also made regularly in other professional and everyday situations. Galanova and Korbut criticise the dominance of the usual scientific approach and argue that scientific practices of discovery (as diverse as they may be) are often used as a paradigm for analysing other practices and contexts. One of the aims of this special issue is therefore to break with analytical habits and introduce other descriptive and conceptual resources that can be applied to the topic.
The special issue is a result of the workshop ‘Discovery Work’ of Practical Action in Different Institutional Settings, organised by Olga Galanova and Estrid Sørensen.
The special issue can be found here.
October 2025
Estrid Sørensen has contributed an article about stories told by different types of data: distant, engaged, responsible, collective and planetary. Her article has now been published in Alltage und Kultur/en der Digitalität (empirisch-) kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf den soziokulturellen Wandel, a publication based on the ÖGEKW conference of the same name, which took place in Klagenfurt in 2023. In her essay, Sørensen assumes that digital data – regardless of whether it is quantitative, semantic, photographic or in another form – is generally treated as representations of worlds that are separate from the data and therefore constitute distanced data. The article argues that data can also tell stories, thus becoming engaged data that is particularly suitable for ethnographic research. With distanced and engaged data, stories can not only be represented and told in different ways, they also enable different social and material relationships and complicate others.
The article can be found here.
24th-26th September 2025, Mainz
As a representative of CRC 1567 Virtual Lifeworlds, Fabian Pittroff attended the 5th Culture Community Plenary of NFDI4Culture in Mainz from 24th until 26th September 2025.
NFDI4Culture is a consortium that establishes a needs-based infrastructure for research data, ranging from architecture and art history to musicology, theatre, dance, film, and media studies. The Culture Community Plenary (CCP) provides an important opportunity for intensive communication between the consortium's staff and its diverse community of researchers and creators.
At this event, Fabian Pittroff presented an Infrabel, which is a fable about infrastructure based on the research and design work at the CRC 1567 Virtual Lifeworlds. Researchers are increasingly finding themselves in an environment full of guidelines, services, and tools for managing research data. The contribution aimed to reflect insights from everyday humanities research back to the research data management community, helping to continue the dialogue between practical humanities research and infrastructure development.
More information can be found here and here.
26th August 2025, 10:00-16:00, Virtual Classroom GB 8/137
As part of the SFB Virtuelle Lebenswelten Methodenwerkstatt, Mace Ojala will organise a Computer Care Day. The informal, communal and hands-on workshop is dedicated to basic computer care and maintenance of your own digital devices. Computers are in need of care. Repair, maintenance and care of basic things are generally underappreciated and neglected – there always seems to be something "more important" to do, for "more imporant" reasons, for benefit of "more important" people. Fields such as science and technology studies, media studies, as well as the long traditions of feminisms and engineering have conceptualized and theorized this reproductive, restorative and essential work. Within dominant systems of innovation, extraction and confusion, care is always long-term, relational, and even radical. During Computer Care Day, contributions by Ronja Trischler, Patrizia Breil, Fabian Pittroff, Tereza Haliková and Mace Ojala will be provided.
More information can be found here.
16th July 2025, 18:00-20:00, Deutsches Elektrizitätsmuseum ZeitreiseStrom Recklinghausen
Estrid Sørensen, along with Mario Michael Sommerhäuser (EGLV) and Dorothea Hamilton (FernUniversität Hagen), will participate in a panel discussion about the renaturalisation of the Emscher; a river with a long and varied history and a contemporary witness of the Ruhr area’s Nature-Culture. The event is part of the series "Regionale Identifikation im Ruhrgebiet. Zwischen offiziellen Erinnerungskulturen und alltäglicher Praxis“, organised by Stefan Berger (Institute for Social Movement, Ruhr University Bochum), Frank Hillebrandt (FernUniversität Hagen) and Ute Eickelkamp (German Mining Museum Bochum). While the series explores the relationship between social identification and geo-resources, the panel will focus on one specific aspect of the regional identification.
More information can be found here.
3rd July 2025, Universität Duisburg-Essen
Olga Galanova will take part in the 8th research gathering „Kommunikation in Institutionen und Organisationen“ of the Institute for Communication Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen, where multiple researchers aim to discuss their current research work on communication processes in institutional and organisational settings. Her evening lecture will provide insight into the methodological considerations of her work on relationship formats in calls to the Ministry for State Security.
More information can be found here.
4th-5th June 2025, Freie Universität Berlin
Olga Galanova will take part in the conference of the Diskursmonitor research group, entitled "„Das geht zu weit!“ Sprachlich-kommunikative Strategien der Legitimierung und Delegitimierung von Protest in öffentlichen, medialen und politischen Diskursen“. Based on current developments in Germany and abroad, the conference, which will take place from June 4 to 5 in Berlin, aims to discuss the linguistic and communicative strategies with which rival actors attempt to legitimize or delegitimize various forms of protests. With her talk „Delegitimierung von Protest als Interaktionsprozess: Zur kommunikativen Resilienzunterdrückung in Diktaturen,“ Olga Galanova contributes to the conference theme regarding the delegitimization of protest in dictatorships.
More information can be found here.
Summer Term 2025, MB 4/165 at Ruhr-University Bochum and on Zoom
The programme for the 13th 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 "Drawing Together" and speakers include Anna Gonzales Suero (Bauhaus University Weimar), Maxime Le Calvé (Humboldt University Berlin), Jeannette Pols (University of Amsterdam) and Mace Ojala (Ruhr-University Bochum). Please find more information here. Everyone is most welcome!
19th - 20th March 2025, Leopoldina Centre for Science Studies Halle (Saale)
As part of the workshop "Herausforderung von Forschung in hybriden Arenen: Forschungsalltag als Bewältigung epistemischer Heterogenität“ at the Centre for Science Studies at the Leopoldina, Estrid Sørensen will give a keynote lecture on “Formats of research in hybrid arenas”. The workshop will focus on how to deal with the double epistemic heterogeneity in everyday research. Epistemic heterogeneity is understood here in two ways: on the one hand, as the heterogeneity of knowledge sources, which is caused by the different disciplines as well as by non-academic actors, and on the other hand, the heterogeneity of relevance, i.e. heterogeneous socially relevant research. In order to examine how research takes place in such hybrid arenas, the workshop calls for reflection on the basis of three selected exploratory spaces: Knowledge Production and Knowledge Communication, Institutional Connection and Funding Structure, and Career Paths. Estrid Sørensen's talk is embedded in the first space, Knowledge Production and Knowledge Communication.
More information can be found here.
19th March 2025, 15:45-17:15, Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS) Mannheim
As part of the 24th work conference on conversation research „Responsives Verhalten: Praktiken, Handlungen und Affordanzen“, Olga Galanova will hold a data session titled „Fishing von Informationen in Anrufen bei der Stasi: Zur strategischen Initiierung des responsiven Verhaltens im geheimdienstlichen Setting“. The conference will take place from March 19 to 21 and provides a platform for presenting and discussing current work in conversation analysis and interactional linguistics as well as findings on responsive behavior in spoken German, both in informal contexts and in professional settings.
More information, including the full program and the registration, can be found here.
11th – 14th March 2025, Berlin
The RUSTlab team will be part of the 2025 STS Hub in Berlin with various individual and collaborative contributions. Based on Donna Haraway and Karen Barad’s methodology of diffraction, the current theme is "Diffracting the Critical“. It is an opportunity to collectively explore how the critical is entangled in the complex interplay of the three thematic clusters: ecologies and infrastructures, scales and temporalities, collaborations and solidarities.
Sandra Abels and Fabian Pittroff will be part of the 23rd Panel "Demarcating boundaries of and with data: Boundary work in the age of datafication", which will take place on Tuesday, March 11, between 15:00 and 16:30. Sandra Abel‘s paper "There must be something about this?!?...' – On restructuring a museum’s data-base“ is about museums as essential informational infrastructures and the structure and use of databases. "Data Spirits: Data practices along and across the boundaries of humanities research“ is the title of Fabian Pittroff‘s work. It focuses on the essentiality of data in the humanities and the possibilities of diffractive attention to shared data.
On Friday, March 14, from 9:00 to 10:30, the 30th panel "Diffraction, reflection and dissemination of/through academic disciplines. How what belongs (not) together is merging in the digital era of late capitalism is happening," in which Estrid Sørensen as well as the whole RUSTlab will participate. The latter is engaged with rusting as an intra-active notion, therefore their paper is entitled "Rusting through academic boundaries“. Estrid Sørensen’s work on "Planetary knowledge and a spheric academia“ suggests a revision of the understanding of knowledge in STS as planetary, in addition to the previous understandigs of knowledge as epistemic, social, and material.
Aditionally, Leman Çelik will present a poster during the poster session on Wednesday, March 12, between 14:00 and 15:30. Her poster, titled „Through the Eye of a Pigeon: From Life in the Lab to Data,“ focuses on the journey of data in scientific knowledge processes using the example of a biopsychological research group and lab pigeons.
13th February 2025, 16.15-17.00, Max-Weber-Kolleg Erfurt
On the 13th and 14th of February 2025, the workshop „Das Ich im Rampenlicht – Bedingungen und Kulturbedeutung moderner Selbstthematisierung“ will be held at the University of Erfurt. The workshop is a collaboration between the Max-Weber-Kolleg and the Institut Franco-Allemand de Sciences Historiques et Sociales (IFRA-SHS) and deals with the preconditions and cultural significance of self-thematization in modern societies. Olga Galanova’s talk „Selbstthematisierungen in denunziatorischen Kontaktaufnahmen zur Stasi: von moralischer Selbstentlastung zur pragmatischen Fremdbelastung“ makes a contribution in the context of denunciatory contacts with the Stasi.
More information can be found here.
15th January 2025
We warmly welcome Rahel as a new member of our team. Rahel is a student of social science with a special interest in queerfeminist and decolonial theorist. We have a lot to learn from her, and look most forward to working with her!
We congratulate our PHD candidate Heike Gerdes on her fem:talent scholarship. The scholarship is awarded by the Emden/Leer University of Applied Sciences and serves to promote young female academics.
December 2024
Mace Ojala has contributed to an article on Science and Technology Studies (STS) labs in technical universities and their contribution to pedagogy and knowledge production that has now been published in the current issue of Engaging Science, Technology, and Society. The research uses the ETHOS Lab at the IT University of Copenhagen as a case study to explore how teaching can serve as a site of STS experimentation. Through three events from 2017 to 2020, the authors illustrate how the lab challenges traditional university structures and hierarchies by integrating teaching and research, rethinking space and time, and fostering feminist praxis. The article highlights the critical potential of STS labs in reshaping ways of knowing and recommends approaches for interdisciplinary and inclusive educational practices.
The article can be found here.
27. November 2024, 17:00-18:30 Uhr, Online-Podiumsdiskussion
Digitale Forschungspraktiken, die weitreichende Digitalisierung unserer Arbeitswelt und der Einsatz computergestützter Methoden in Forschung, Lehre und Vermittlung haben ökologische Konsequenzen, auch in der Geschichtswissenschaft.
Eine Vielzahl von ethischen sowie praktischen Fragen stehen im Raum: Wie lassen sich innovative digitale Ansätze mit einem klimagerechten und effizienten Energieverbrauch in Einklang bringen? Was können Forschungsinstitutionen und was kann jede:r Einzelne tun, um den Ressourcenverbrauch bei geschichtswissenschaftlichen Projekten möglichst gering zu halten? Aber auch: Was können wir aus der Geschichte an nachhaltigen Ansätzen für digitale Forschungspraktiken heute ableiten?
Die Podiumsdiskussion nähert diesen Fragen aus interdisziplinären Blickwinkeln. Unter Moderation von Mareike König (DHI Paris) diskutieren Anne Baillot (Germanistik und Digital Humanities, Universität Le Mans/ DARIAH-ERIC), Anna-Katharina Woebse (Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Umweltgeschichte, Universität Freiburg) und Estrid Sørensen (Kulturpsychologie und Wissens Anthropologie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum).
Weitere Informationen zur Vortragsreihe und Podiumsdiskussion finden Sie hier.
Es ist keine Voranmeldung nötig. Sie können sich unter dem Link direkt einwählen.
5th - 7th November 2024, MB 0/165 at Ruhr-University Bochum
As part of the CRC subproject Virtual Lifeworlds Estrid Sørensen, Stefan Laser, Leman Celik and Sandra Abels will organize a collaborative mapping workshop on sustainable data paths togehter with various expert groups.
Scientific data helps us understand and solve problems - also climate problems. Yet they themselves require increasing amounts of energy and raw materials, longer global value chains, and more bureaucracy.
Hence we ask how data and questions of ecological sustainability, as well as issues of ecological conservation are related. This includes attention to hardware and software, electricity, financing, suppliers and procurement as well as scientists, technicians, operators and managers, and regulations. It includes competences and understanding, creativity, regulations, supervision and much more. And because these all are connected, changes must be organised to work together. The aim of the mapping workshop is to draw a ''map'' of the diverse actors and components involved and discuss your concerns. The mapping will be based on ongoing research. Different actors who are involved in using, operating or supporting the university's data infrastructure are invited to share their knowledge and experiences.
More information can be found on the website of the CRC.
Find previous news in the archive.
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Last update: Nov 25, 2025
