Short Abstract

The roundtable brings together the expertise and practical experiences of STS-scholars collaborating with modelling practitioners across disciplines. It discusses the world- and future-making capacities of scientific models, and reflects on modes of collaborative ethnographic research in STS.

Description

Models are widely used in the sciences to explore social-ecological futures and pasts on different scales, and to sense worlds that are not physically accessible (Ballestero 2023). With their scenario-testing and projecting capacities, they could be a way of approaching ‘how things could be otherwise’, engaging human and non-human agencies alike. As a practical and often interdisciplinary endeavour, models are performative, deeply situated and social-materially embedded (Klein, Unverzagt et al. 2024). It matters who constructs and uses them where and for which purpose (Alba, Ter Horst et al. 2025).

In STS, the discussion on the world- and future-making role of models has gained traction in recent years (Landström, Soneryd 2024, Wharton 2022). Beyond the question of how STS can conceptualize modelling practices, we draw on Isabelle Stengers’ notion of “earthly sciences” to engage with knowing Earth in the Anthropocene in an inter- and transdisciplinary fashion, using both “sophisticated detection devices” and “sensibilities belonging to a place” (Stengers 2020:233).

In this roundtable we will bring together the expertise and practical experiences of STS-scholars collaborating with modelers in different modes and heterogenous collectives. We will discuss the ‘how’ of modelling collaborations: which roles have we taken on and how have these shifted? What counts as a ‘successful’ collaboration in the first place? Methodologically, we are interested in how we can work with methods and representations as different as modelling and ethnography. Roundtable participants have worked with practitioners in fields ranging from urban mobility governance, interdisciplinary and participatory sustainability research, water security, and hydrogeology. Our aim is to foster an exchange on whether and how STS researchers can collaborate with modelers to foster resilient futures by changing how modeling shapes current and future understandings of the world.

Participants: Dr. Rossella Alba, Prof. Andrea Ballestero, Janine Hagemeister M.A., Anja Klein M.A., Dr. Krystin Unverzagt