Paper short abstract:

Stage performances of life scientists impact on the way scientific communities and their values are made. Through the analysis of theatre, orchestra and festival performances by biologists, this study shows how valuations are practiced and negotiated as part of newly emerging social performances.

Paper long abstract:

As academia is undergoing various transformations as part of its entrepreneurial turn, social practices constituting scientific communities are changing as well. While there is substantial research analysing how transitions in the life sciences affect how and which knowledge gets produced, there is less attention for the ways in which personal and communal values become provoked, maintained or established as part of changing socio-scientific communities.

During my fieldwork in the United States, I observed stage performances of life scientists during a 'cultural diversity festival', in which researchers were embracing their passion for science by acting, dancing, and singing while referring to their cultural heritage. By relating these presentations to performances of the molecular biology chamber orchestra and the drama club of an Austrian life science research campus, I will analyse how these newly emerging stage performances impact on social and scientific value systems of the scientists and their respective research departments.

By using both narrative interviews and fieldwork observations, I critically engage with these performances, conceptualising them as ways of mediating values in negotiation.

Thus, my work focuses on the understanding of valuations at the margins, through stage performances of life scientists as value systems in the midst of entrepreneurial and more conservative ideals of academia.