Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to show, analyze and reflect my several roles as Feminist STS scholar doing research and intervening in a male-dominated technoscientific environment. My aim is to exchange with engaged colleagues on how to handle those roles in my every day and scientific work.

Paper long abstract:

According to Jutta Weber, Feminist Technoscience Studies are not only an analytical or theoretical, but also an explicitly political project seeking "to question techno-pragmatic and hegemonic forms of rationality and the dominant logic of efficiency" by "showing and analyzing the on-going co-construction of gender, science, and technology" (Weber 2006, 411).

This contribution establishes on these remarks by reflecting on my own work: I want to show and analyze my 'social ownership' as (1) member of a graduate school concerned with the subject of hybrid lightweight materials, (2) doing an (feminist) ethnographic research about this very same graduate school and its members and (3) being one of only two women in this environment.

I consider my work not only as an analysis of the socio-material practices in a transdisciplinary field where mechanical engineers, physicists, chemists and industrial agents meet, but also as a means to "bring" (Feminist) STS-knowledge into technoscientific environments: I try to intervene, to break up traditional ideas of "real" science, gender roles or the social construction of technology in various ways (which is no easy task, but an important and innovative thing to do in my opinion).

My wish is to 'use' this track as opportunity to fruitfully reflect on the several roles I occupy that 'other' me in my every day work. As I am a PhD student new to the field, I seek for an exchange with other active and/or more experienced colleagues and hope to find new insights for my empirical and "interventional" work.