Karen Kastenhofer

• PhD
• Senior Academy Scientist at Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW)

In recent years, the interest in developing genetically modified microorganisms (GMMs), including GMMs developed by genome editing, for use in the environment has significantly increased. However, the scientific knowledge on the ecology of such GMMs is severely limited. There is also little experience at the hands of regulators on how to evaluate t...

Supporting information relating to protection goals in the EU legislation which are relevant for the assessment of GM microorganisms referred to in the following article: Eckerstorfer et al. (2025) Environmental Applications of GM Microorganisms: Tiny Critters Posing Huge Challenges for Risk Assessment and Governance. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2025, 26, 3...

What ethos and what role repertoire can scientists bring to bear in the face of the current climate emergency without risking the very legitimacy and authority of science? In this article, I draw on Max Weber’s and Robert K. Merton’s conceptions of normal science , as well as on reconstructions of science’s ethos and role repertoires in post-normal...

Past waves of biotech controversies have succumbed to risk frames and ethics frames mostly (cp. Kastenhofer 2009). These discursive framings related to the prevalent regulatory frameworks and institutional landscapes of the time (Böschen et al. 2010, Bogner and Menz 2010). Moreover, they further fueled a staging of biotech controversies as science-...

Introduction to the conference

How do epistemic cultures – as originally defined and reconstructed by Karin Knorr-Cetina (1999) – fuel expert controversies and contribute to lasting stale-mate situations in evidence-based regulatory disputes? Are there scientific cultures that transgress the epistemic dimension, e.g. in technosciences that combine an orientation towards better u...

Three years ago, the sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged academia just like any other societal field, while at the same time putting science center stage. Media attention tended to focus on particular disciplines, such as epidemiology and microbiology, and on individual, mostly local, experts. Based on the idea that science as a global...

In this paper we focus on a special feature of science and technology studies: the trajectories of our engagement with ‘emerging technosciences’. Many of us entertain close links to a particular group of scientists; our scholarly careers and identities build around thematic specialisations, trans-field collaborations and convivialities. But more of...

Technology assessment (TA) is a paradigmatic case for the manifold and, at times, ambiguous processes of identity formation of researchers in inter-and transdisci-plinary settings. TA combines the natural, technical, and social sciences and follows the multiple missions of scientific analysis, public outreach, and policy advice. However, despite th...

Sixty years have passed since Merton’s famous publication of “a note on science and democracy,” outlining the scientific ethos via four sets of norms, namely communism, universalism, disinterest­edness, and organized skepticism (CUDOS). Merton’s rationale was that the implementation of this ethos was instrumental in realizing science’s institutiona...

In 1999, four editorials in the journal Biological Chemistry commemorate how, since the 1980s, Vienna has transformed from a "[peripheral] outpost near the Iron Curtain" to a "central hub" for life science research. A closer look at these texts reveals the explicit and implicit role of drawing maps for and within science, depicting centers, periphe...

Die durch den Sars-Cov-2-Virus Ende 2019 ausgelöste Pandemie hält nun seit zwei Jahren Gesellschaften welt-weit in Atem. Dem ersten Schock über die nicht aufzu-haltende Ausbreitung und die damit verbundenen ge-sundheitlichen Folgen folgten Versuche, den Schaden so gut wie möglich lokal zu begrenzen, und die rasante Su-che nach Therapien und Impfsto...

What are the expert opinions of fellow academics from diverse disciplines worldwide on critical side ef�fects, learning opportunities, and preparedness relating to the current Covid-19 pandemic? In this sum�mary, we present preliminary results of an expert survey conducted May-August 2021. Eighty-one opinions from Austria, Germany, Brazil, Canada,...

The Covid-19 induced global crisis has now lasted for almost two years. We have seen different phases in how societies reacted to the challenge: the delayed acknowledgement of the scale of the threat, the following state of shock, the first national, then growingly transnational efforts to regain control over the pandemic development, the wave-like...

The Austrian Institute of Technology Assessment (ITA) was established in the 1980s at the Austrian Academy of Sciences with a vision and mission “to understand the complex interplay between technology and society from multiple perspectives, to concomitantly analyse technology development, and to contribute to socially responsible technology policy...

“When is Covid Covid?” is the title of a discussion paper pub-lished by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University on 11 September 2020. Amid the multinational struggle for an appro-priate social and political approach to the crisis triggered by Covid-19, a recognized panel of medical experts alerts us that Covid-19 is defined very...

“When is Covid Covid?” is the title of a discussion paper published by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University on 11 September 2020. Amid the multinational struggle for an appropriate social and political approach to the crisis triggered by Covid-19, a recognized panel of medical experts alerts us that Covid-19 is defined very d...

In conventional STS analyses, accounts of controversy, denial or resistance are mostly made sense of as an indicator of explicit or implicit rules that actors react to. The focus is on the persisting hegemonies, prevailing paradigms and normative powers exerted in the academic field and these are thus reconstructed. Reversing the analytical gaze, o...

This open access edited book provides new thinking on scientific identity formation. It thoroughly interrogates the concepts of community and identity, including both historical and contemporaneous analyses of several scientific fields. Chapters examine whether, and how, today’s scientific identities and communities are subject to fundamental chang...

This introductory chapter begins with the empirical example of synthetic biology, a case that has challenged our own thinking, provoking us to re-address the concepts of scientific ‘community’ and ‘identity’ in contemporary technoscience. The chapter then moves on to a delineation of the conceptualisations of community and identity in past sociolog...

summarizes socio-political issues pertaining to newly emerging technosciences like bio- or geoengineering

Systems and synthetic biology can be understood as newly emerging technosciences. Both constitute phenomena shaped by promises and visions, a certain logic and function of labelling , specific forms of social organisation, an embedding in specific regimes of funding and innovation as well as a characteristic matrix of orientations within research p...

Short note on 5G mobile radio and health

Research report evaluating and discussing the current scientific discourse on health risks of electromagnetic fields of mobile radio.

Problem: Visions of technology, future scenarios, guiding visions (Leitbilder) represent imaginations of future states of affairs that play a functional role in processes of technological research, development and innovation—e.g. as a means to create attention, communication, coordination, or for the strategic exertion of influence. Since a couple...

Over past decades, the notion of policy advice in technology assessment (TA) has widened, going beyond traditional advice in the form of expert opinions by adding a broad range of brokerage activities. Concomitantly, the roles of scientific policy advisors have diversified. Based on an empirical study of advisory practices at the Institute of Techn...

Weimer und Vining (1999) unterscheiden drei Rollen, die Wissenschafte-rInnen in Politikberatung einnehmen können: den objective technician, den issue advocate und den client's advocate. Dieser Beitrag widmet sich jener Rolle, die in der gegenwärtigen Diskussion kaum reflektiert wird, aber dennoch für die Normativität von Technikfolgenabschätzung (T...

Weimer und Vining (1999) unterscheiden drei Rollen, die WissenschafterInnen in Politikberatung einnehmen können: den objective technician, den issue advocate und den client's advocate. Dieser Beitrag widmet sich jener Rolle, die in der gegenwärtigen Diskussion kaum reflektiert wird, aber dennoch für die Normativität von Technikfolgenabschätzung (TA...

The disunity of science, more specifically, its socio-cultural differentiation, has been the topic of various empirically grounded analyses in the past. Becher (1989) reconstructs different academic tribes within academia, Knorr-Cetina (1999) compares the different epistemic cultures within molecular biology and high energy physics research groups,...

Der vorliegende Bericht widmet sich der Rekonstruktion unterschiedlicher akademischer "Bio-logien" am Universitätsstandort Wien: was unter biologischer Forschung und Lehre verstanden wird, wie diese bezeichnet und realisiert werden, mit welchem Selbstverständnis und in welchen sozialen Formationen sie ausgeübt werden, war auch in den letzten Jahrze...

Doing science comes with a specific identity and membership. From Ludwig Fleck's 'thought collectives' to Warren Hagstrom inspired 'scientific communities', from Tony Becher and Paul Trowler's 'academic tribes' to Knorr Cetina's 'transe-pistemic networks', STS scholars have been busy analysing links between identity and belonging and conceptualisin...

“One major thesis I already gathered from the accumulated material is that systems biology as a (techno)epistemic culture shares a lot of its characteristics with other contemporary Big Science research approaches such as modern brain research instead of gaining its identity solely from (a linear advancement of) its historical forerunners. In other...

La biología de sistemas y la biología sintética pueden ser consideradas como ejemplos de tecnociencias emergentes. Están esencialmente marcadas por promesas de futuro y por visiones, por una cierta lógica y uso de términos, por determinadas formas de organización social, por la integración en un régimen específico de fomento e innovación, así como...

Technowissenschaftliche Visionen als Herausforderung für die Technikfolgenabschätzung 1 Transhumanistische Zukunftsvisionen wie Neuroenhancement – also die Möglichkeit, neurologische Kapazitäten technologiebasiert über ein normales Ausmaß zu steigern – werfen nicht nur Fragen nach ihrer ethischen Bewertung oder kulturellen Bedeutung auf. In aktuell...

STS scholars have been struggling for a while now with how to conceive of new phenomena such as systems biology and synthetic biology. Do these represent "empty signifiers", "buzzwords", "emerging research fields" or new disciplines? I argue in my presentation that all of these attributions are neither completely wrong nor completely right; rather,...

Peter Galison initially based his concept of the trading zone on micro-scale analyses in the field of microphysics, depicting a trading zone as “an arena in which radically different activities could be locally, but not globally, coordinated” (Galison 1996: 119). Hereby, he specifically envisioned research related activities undertaken by members o...

The term 'sustainability science' has been established to denote an innovative field of research which is problem driven and aims at understanding the dynamics of coupled social-ecological systems. Sustainability science as a child of the early 21st century takes up challenges that have been formulated under the headers of post-normal science and M...

Systems and synthetic biology both emerged around the turn of this century as labels for new research approaches. Although their disciplinary status as well as their relation to each other is rarely discussed in depth, now and again the idea is invoked that both approaches represent 'two sides of the same coin'. The following paper focuses on this...

Systems biology and synthetic biology are said to represent ‘two sides of the same coin,’ with systems biology focussing on understanding and synthetic biology on construction. This notion is based on the implicit assumption that understanding and construction (or science and engineering) are, in themselves, ‘two sides of the same coin.’ Moreover,...

Within the realm of nano-, bio-, info- and cogno- (or NBIC) technosciences, the ‘power to change the world’ is often invoked. One could dismiss such formulations as ‘purely rhetorical’, interpret them as rhetorical and self-fulfilling or view them as an adequate depiction of one of the fundamental characteristics of technoscience. In the latter cas...

Within the realm of nano-, bio-, info- and cogno- (or NBIC) technosciences, the 'power to change the world' is often invoked. One could dismiss such formulations as 'purely rhetorical', interpret them as rhetorical and self-fulfilling or view them as an adequate depiction of one of the fundamental characteristics of technoscience. In the latter cas...

Post-Normal Science (PNS) as a theory links epistemology and governance. It not only focuses on problem situations where facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent, but also tries to develop epistemic approaches that allow for sound scientific answers. The following article addresses major epistemological challenges wi...

Die Systembiologie zielt darauf ab, biologische Prozesse und Organismen in ihrer Gesamtheit zu verstehen. Theoretisch und forschungs-praktisch werden entsprechende Ansätze seit knapp zwei Jahrzehnten verfolgt. Als Weiter-führung der Genomforschung haben sie be-reits viele Bereiche der biomedizinischen For-schung durchdrungen. Allerdings ist bisher...

The establishment of new interdisciplinary fields such as ecological economics, human ecology or technology assessment can be interpreted as a logical consequence of striving for new sustainability sciences that address current global, multi-dimensional and multi-scale challenges. These set out to bridge the gap between the natural and the social s...

Risiko und Ethik haben sich als dominante Problematisierungsweisen in Technikkontroversen etabliert. Diese Rahmungen sind mit bestimmten Governance-Regimes assoziiert. Im Fall der erst im Entstehen begriffenen, sogenannten emerging technologies wie Nanotechnologie oder synthetische Biologie wird Kontroversialität vielfach antizipiert, ohne dass kon...

While in the beginning of the environmental debate, conflicts over environmental and technological issues had primarily been understood in terms of "risk", over the past two decades the relevance of ignorance, or nonknowledge, was emphasized. Referring to this shift of attention to nonknowledge the article presents two main findings: first, that in...

Inter- und Transdisziplinarität wurden einstmals dem Randbereich wissenschaftlicher Praxis zugerechnet. Heute gelten sie als Normalfall, sowohl im Forschungsbetrieb wie auch in der wissenschaftlichen Politikberatung. Beispiele für diesen Wandel finden sich in der Nachhaltigkeits- und Sicherheitsforschung, der Technikfolgenabschätzung und der Kommis...

The presented paper addresses the concept of technoscience and its possible implications for technology assessment. Drawing on the discourse about converging technologies, it formulates the assumption that a general shift within science from epistemic cultures to techno-epistemic cultures lies at the heart of the propagated convergence between nano...

Global failures to reach a sustainable development within present-day societies as well as recent breakthroughs within technoscience pose new challenges to engineering education. The list of competencies which engineers should have to rise to these challenges is long and divers, and often encompasses radically new attributes. The task of engineerin...

Controversies on emerging technosciences, such as agri-biotechnology and medical biotechnology, have been a formative aspect of the public response to technoscientific innovations for the last decades. Within these controversies, the problematization of technoscience has not always been framed in the same way. Debates on agri-biotechnological appli...

Die Wissenschaft sieht sich zunehmend mit der Anforderung konfrontiert, politik- und handlungsrelevantes Wissen bereitzustellen. Gleichzeitig wird ein Rückgang an Vertrauen in die Wissenschaft beklagt und die Forderung nach risikosensibler sowie problem- und nutzenorientierter Forschung erhoben. Aus diesem Spannungsfeld heraus ergeben sich vielfält...

Convergence of research fields under a new techno-scientific paradigm is currently being discussed among scholars of social studies of science and technology, and in the context of research funding programmes and frameworks of science and technology policy. Mostly, these discussions refer to the macro-scale and adopt a broad understanding of conver...

Sicherheitsforschung zu neuen Technologien wie Agrobiotechnologie oder Mobilfunk ist ein wich-tiger Bestandteil gegenwärtiger Technologiepolitik, öffentlicher Meinungsbildung und Aushandlung. Zugleich fällt sie als inter-und transdisziplinäres Forschungsprogramm aus traditionellen Prozes-sen disziplinärer Qualitätssicherung heraus. Der folgende Bei...

Sicherheitsforschung zu neuen Technologien wie Agrobiotechnologie oder Mobilfunk ist ein wichtiger Bestandteil gegenwärtiger Technologiepolitik, öffentlicher Meinungsbildung und Aushandlung. Zugleich fällt sie als inter- und transdisziplinäres Forschungsprogramm aus traditionellen Prozessen disziplinärer Qualitätssicherung heraus. Der folgend...

The limits of scientific knowledge are an emerging problem in the debates about technological risk. In an exemplary analysis of the controversy surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMO), we show that the epistemic settings of two involved scientific disciplines - molecular biology and ecology - entail different types of non-knowledge and dea...

Currently, a growing societal awareness of problems in the context of unsustainable development meets with conflicts of interest, and the actual implementation of sustainability research, and sustainable innovations and technologies, has only been mildly successful. Sustainable development demands nothing less than a radical change in our modes of...