Ulrike Felt is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Vienna (Faculty of Social Sciences) since 1999. She has been Head of the Department of Science and Technology Studies from 2004 to 2014 and from 2018 to 2024. From 2014 to 2018 she was Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. From 2015-2024 she was also leading the research platform Responsible Research and Innovation in Academic Practice, and was member in the research platforms “Plastic in Environment and Society” and “Governing Digital Practices”. Currently she is member and part of the Management Board of the “Environment and Climate Hub” at the University of Vienna

Career: After completing her PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Vienna (1983), she worked for five years at the European Nuclear Research Centre CERN in Geneva. There she was a member of an interdisciplinary research team analysing the social, political and scientific aspects of this first major European research infrastructure. During this phase, a scientific reorientation towards science and technology studies took place. In 1988 she accepted a position at the newly founded Institute for Philosophy of Science and Science Research, directed by Helga Nowotny. In 1997 she received her habilitation in Science Studies/Sociology of Sciences and in 1999 she became professor.

Research: Ulrike Felt has extensive experience in managing national and international research projects, as well as in applying and further developing a wide range of qualitative social science methods (focus groups, card-based discussion methods, interview techniques, etc.). Much of her research is interdisciplinary, with particular emphasis on close cooperation with the natural sciences, engineering and (bio)medicine. The specific fields she worked on were quite diverse over time, but had a strong focus on biomedicine and life sciences, environment (energy, plastics, environmental data science) and physics (new materials, sensors, nanotechnology, nuclear technologies, …). Digital transformations have become the focus of her work in recent years.

She currently is working mainly on the ERC Advanced Grant INNOVATION RESIDUES.

Visiting Scholar: in a number of international institutions, among them Université Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg), Universite du Québec à Montréal, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris, Collegium Helveticum, ETH Zurich, STS group at Harvard and University of Antwerps.

Field building: From 2017-2021 she was President of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST), of which she was a board member from 1994 to 1999. She was also on the board of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) from 2002 to 2004. From 2002 to 2007 she was editor-in-chief of the international peer-reviewed Journal Science, Technology, & Human Values (Journal of the Society for Social Studies of Science). She has been a founding president of the Austrian Society for Science and Technology Studies and served as its president until 2017. She was the managing editor of the Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (MIT Press, 2017), and of the Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Studies (Edgar Elgar, 2024.

Teaching: she was leading the development and implementation of the new Master’s programme “Science-Technology-Society” (start: 2009) at the University of Vienna, which she was the responsible programme director until 2014. In this context, she received the “UNIVIE Teaching Award” together with colleagues in 2014. In 2015, she was awarded the Ars Docendi State Prize for excellent teaching. So far more than 40 PhD and 130+ MA students have successfully finished their research under her supervision.

Policy advice: she was and is also active in various functions in the field of national and European policy advice. She was a member of the European Research Advisory Board (EURAB), co-chaired the Expert Group on Science and Governance (Report) with Brian Wynne in Brussels, and prepared the Policy Briefing on “The future of science in society” for the European Science Foundation. In 2014, she and her co-authors received the Ziman Award of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology for this Policy Brief.

She is currently a member of the Disposal Advisory Board of the Federal Ministry for Climate Protection, which has the task of developing recommendations for the final disposal of radioactive waste in Austria. She is currently also member of the international advisory board of ANSES the French government agency whose main mission is to assess health risks in food, the environment and work and of the Conseil scientifique pour l’Andra, the French national radioactive waste management agency. Furthrermore, she is member of the supervisory board of the FWF, the Austrian Research Fund. 

For the publications see:

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7506-4234