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 analyzing 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 a professor.

Research: Ulrike Felt’s research examines changing academic research cultures, questions of governance, democracy, and public engagements around technoscientific developments, and the ways we live in contemporary knowledge and innovation societies. Over time, her empirical research has addressed diverse fields ranging from physics (new materials, sensors, nanotechnology, nuclear technologies, …), life sciences, biomedicine/health, (micro)plastics, digital transformations and research infrastructures. Her work is strongly interdisciplinary and characterized by close collaboration with the sciences. Since 2023, her research has primarily focused on the ERC Advanced Grant Innovation Residues: Modes and Infrastructures of Caring for our Longue-durée Environmental Futures.

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: Ulrike Felt had been the founding director of the STS department. She has held numerous leadership positions in the field, including serving on the boards of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) from 2002 to 2004 and the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) from 1994 to 1999. From 2017 to 2021, she served as President of EASST. She was the founding president of STS Austria (2015-2017).

From 2002 to 2007, she was Editor-in-Chief of the international peer-reviewed journal Science, Technology, & Human Values. She was also founding president of the Austrian Society for Science and Technology Studies and served in this role until 2017. In addition, she was Managing Editor of the Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (MIT Press, 2017) and the Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Studies (Edward 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.  So far more than 40 PhD and 130+ MA students have successfully finished their research under her supervision.

Awards:

2014: Ziman Award of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology for policy work; and

2014: UNIVIE Teaching Award 

2015: Ars Docendi Staatpreis 

2017: Infrastructure Award of the Society for Social Studies of Science

2024: Prize of the City of Vienna for Social Sciences and Humanities 

2025: Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Social Sciences and Technology 2025, TU Munich

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.

She was a member of the Nuclear Disposal Advisory Board of the Federal Ministry for Climate Protection, which had the task of developing recommendations for the final disposal of radioactive waste in Austria. She is currently 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