Paper short abstract:

STS research on the emergence of technoscientific fields has so far not considered the question of collaborative research as a relevant layer of social organisation. I argue that bringing them into focus improves our understanding of the emergence and adaptability of technoscientific communities.

Paper long abstract:

During the past decades, STS scholars have analysed the appearance of a series of areas of research that not only transgress traditional disciplinary boundaries in science, but also basic distinctions like those between science and engineering or basic research and technological development. STS researchers studied a variety of socio-economic configurations in these technoscientific fields. Aspects of interdisciplinarity and the epistemic orientations in a variety of technosciences have also been scrutinised. A question that remains unanswered, however, is the interplay of epistemic and non-epistemic practices of technoscientists as well as their relation to organisational forms and regulatory setups in technoscientific knowledge production. Addressing this is crucial for our understanding of the emergence of new fields of research beyond traditional disciplines and mission orientation.

Using synthetic biology as a case study, I mobilise empirical material from semi-structured expert interviews to approach this question. In studying ways in which synthetic biology research is organised and the meaning assigned to various sorts of collaborations, I am able to show how technoscientists manage to accommodate epistemic practices with non-epistemic work, and how funding regimes shift the boundaries between these aspects of research practices. I argue that specific forms of inter-institutional research collaboration are not only performed to reconcile requirements of inter-disciplinary technoscientific knowledge production with policy imaginaries and funding technologies in the field. They are also a relevant layer of research communities' social organisation that is so far too little understood. Considering this layer improves our understanding of the emergence and adaptability of technoscientific communities.