After successful completion of the course, students are able to identify current problems, particularly with regard to sustainable mobility, and apply methods from different disciplines to analyze these problems.
The seminar deals with current problems in the field of mobility and sustainability. Each semester a different subtopic will be in focus. Guest lecturers from different disciplines share their viewpoints on the topic and teach different methods for analyzing complex sustainability problems. The technological perspective will be complemented especially by social sciences. The course addresses all study fields and aims at creating an interdisciplinary group of students.
In the winter semester 2021/22 the course will be held in English, in cooperation with Robert Braun from Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna (IHS). The topic is Responsible Research and Innovation - a Science, Technology and Society Perspective.
The course will focus on what technology means in our current societies from a social constructivist perspective. Its main focus is on the socio-political nature of technology. It will take as its starting point Martin Heidegger’s famous text on ‘The question concerning technology’ and show how a new understanding of technology and its embeddedness in social affairs in the second half of the 20th century emerged. The course will offer an introduction to by now classic texts and authors of STS, including Winner, Bijker, Latour and Jasanoff. From this theoretical grounding the course will look at ‘automobility’ as a specific sociotechnical transportation setup and present how this sociotechnical frame is understood by a variety of scholars – as ‘system’, ‘regime’, ‘dispositif’ or ‘imaginary’. We will discuss the concept of Responsible research and Innovation (RRI) and emerging phenomena in innovation studies and STS policy and reflect on how this may be relevant for understanding technology and its societal implications. The course will conclude with an analysis and discussion of what RRI means and why it is relevant for the current time of technology transitions, including autonomous mobility, artificial intelligence and biotechnology.
The course is based on a mix of presentations, interactive elements online and offline, hands on group work and student presentations.
Grading will be based on students active participation in the seminar and interactive elements, the final assignment and the presentation and discussion of their mid-term short assignement work.
