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Paper short abstract

Digital Research Infrastructures are reshaping science beyond a paradigm shift. Focusing on astronomy and the SKAO, we introduce the notion of “Infrastructure of Becoming” to analyse how epistemic virtues are continually renegotiated through symbolic, material, and ideological forms of agency.

Paper long abstract

Across domains, from radio astronomy to AI-driven sciences, scientific inquiry is being reconfigured by large-scale digital research infrastructures that reorganise practices to address societal challenges. We examine the cultural tensions this generates by focusing on astronomy, a historically pioneering field that continues to drive major technological innovation (Daston, 2023). Our case is the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO), a transnational radio telescope under construction in Australia and South Africa. SKAO reflects key shifts: from individual to global collaboration, laptop analysis to distributed cloud computing, and local interdisciplinarity to multi-institutional consortia. Its unprecedented data volumes mean astronomers lose direct access to raw data – deleted after initial processing – raising tensions around professional identity, curiosity, epistemic trust, communication, access control, and scientific reproducibility (Durán del Fierro et al., 2024).

Existing frameworks in STS and philosophy – virtue ethics, capability approaches, and responsible research and innovation – address issues of epistemic trust and responsibility (Ratti & Graves, 2025; Vallor, 2021) but fall short in addressing the dynamic negotiation of social agency within infrastructural change. We propose the notion of “Infrastructures of Becoming” (IoB) as an alternative epistemological lens: socio-material spaces where epistemic practices, technologies, data flows, and scholarly contexts co-constitute evolving scientific subjectivities (Zehner & Durán Del Fierro, 2024). Through IoB, we theorise three forms of agency negotiation: symbolic, material, and ideological. We argue these negotiations (re)organise power relations and illuminate how scientists respond differently to change – how they resist, accommodate, and transform cultural practices within digitally driven research environments.